John Grisham on Golden Moments, Rejection and Writing One Page a Day

High-Level Overview

Mel Robbins sits down in her Boston studio with novelist John Grisham for what she calls a full-circle moment. In 1991 she was a miserable first-year student at Boston College Law School when she stayed up two nights reading The Firm. Learning that its author was a lawyer gave her an epiphany: she did not have to practice law for the rest of her life. Thirty-five years later she gets to thank him, and then asks him to tell his own story, which turns out to be far less smooth than the bestseller lists suggest: odd jobs, a D minus in freshman English, years of drifting, a small-town law practice he did not enjoy, a first novel that flopped, and five years of writing at five in the morning before anything paid off.

The tone is warm, funny and self-deprecating on Grisham's side, earnest and encouraging on Mel's. Grisham tells stories; Mel pulls a life lesson out of each one. The conversation moves in roughly chronological loops through Grisham's life, pausing after each story so Mel can turn it into advice for anyone who feels stuck.

The Discussion Explores:

• How The Firm grew out of one offhand remark from a law school friend in 1980, and why Grisham writes every good story idea in a notebook
• The rule that built his career: write at least one page a day, same time, same place, and stop talking about it
• Why he never starts a book until he knows the last scene, and why an idea has to be pitched in 30 seconds
• Odd jobs, a false plagiarism accusation, and drifting at 18 as raw material for everything that came later
• The two "golden moments" that changed his direction: a classroom argument in 1975 and a courtroom he could not forget
• Rejection, a first novel that went nowhere, and the bootleg manuscript that sold the film rights to The Firm
• Learning by studying the people who are great at what you want to do, and taking heart from the ones who are not
• Wrongful convictions, staying hopeful, and doing one small thing each day

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

The book that changed Mel's life, and where it came from

Mel opens by telling Grisham what The Firm did for her. She had applied to law school because she did not know what else to do, hated every part of it, and felt trapped by her loans. Discovering that a practicing lawyer had written that page-turner showed her she could do something else. She finished law school, worked as a public defender in New York City for a couple of years, then left the law. Her takeaway is that you do not have to stay who you are and what you are forever.

Grisham says he has heard similar stories and still finds them hard to believe, because when he started the book almost 40 years ago he had no idea what he was doing. The seed was planted in 1980 at Ole Miss law school. He was not a top student and was not being recruited; he planned to go home, marry his hometown sweetheart and open his own little office. A friend who was a top student came back from interviewing at a tax firm and said he had the impression that once you joined, you never really left, as if the mafia owned it. That line stuck for years. His wife, Renee, loved the idea every time he pitched it, and after he finished A Time to Kill in early 1987 he went straight into it. It took two years.

Mel wonders whether such moments are signs placed in front of us. Grisham does not buy that. He credits an eye for story that came from growing up around storytellers on a front porch in rural Arkansas, listening to the Cardinals game on the radio, and from a mother who disliked television and took the children to the library. Almost weekly he hears something and thinks "that's got potential," and writes it down. Most ideas fade with time. The good ones stick.

One page a day

Asked what a person who feels trapped should take from his life, Grisham answers that you have to keep working and not be smothered by doubt or fear. He learned it the hard way while writing A Time to Kill by hand on legal pads. He would go a couple of weeks without writing anything, and Renee would ask where the next chapter was. Nothing got done until he made himself produce at least a page every day, and for five years he got up at five in the morning to do it before work.

His advice to writers is blunt: "Don't talk your book to death." Sit down and write a page, whether it takes 15 minutes or an hour, preferably at the same time, in the same spot, with the same coffee, as he still does after more than 50 books. And it is not only about writing. Whatever the goal is, "you've got to show up every day."

Mel calls one page a day a four-word philosophy for creating anything. People try to make change so big and so fast that they miss the obvious way to build momentum. She also loves the exchange with Renee as a metaphor: if you feel stuck at the end of a chapter, you simply have not written the next one yet. In her words, "if you're still here, the story hasn't ended."

Know the ending, and be able to say it in 30 seconds

The typed manuscript of A Time to Kill ran to almost a thousand pages, and his first editor cut a third of it. Grisham agreed with the cut, and realized it amounted to a year of his life. He decided never to waste time like that again. He cites something John Irving once said about not writing the first sentence until he has the last one. Grisham's own version is that he does not write the first scene until he knows the last scene, because "if you always know where you're going, it's hard to get lost." He describes writers who race through 50,000 words on a brilliant idea, write themselves into a corner and throw it away.

He also insists a story must be pitched in about 30 seconds; if it can't be, it is probably in trouble. He pitches ideas to Renee, who is brutally honest and usually shoots them down. Mel translates this into clarity: many people do not get what they want because they cannot say what it is. If you can't explain the next chapter of your life in 30 seconds, she says, you will not get there.

Odd jobs, a D minus, and a false accusation

Grisham has laid asphalt, driven a bulldozer, dug ditches, worked for a plumbing company and sold underwear at a Sears in a Memphis mall, where he nearly got fired for refusing to accept the return of a suspicious-looking three-pack. His view: "Every job you ever have is material for the rest of your life." The hard summer jobs taught him what he did not want and made him determined to get to college, which his parents had never had the chance to do. He tells writers to try different jobs, live in different places, and collect success, failure and broken hearts. He did not enjoy his ten years of practicing law, but says, "I would not be a writer if I hadn't been a lawyer."

Then the English class. He did not fail, he corrects Mel: he got a D minus. He had top marks all year until, during the final exam, the teacher called him into the hallway, told him his term paper was too well written for a 19-year-old, accused him of plagiarism and showed him an F. He went to the restroom and cried, was too upset to go back in, and failed the exam as well. He left the school. Only later did he connect that day to his many books about people who are falsely accused and wrongfully convicted. Mel sees his core value in it: justice and fairness.

The first golden moment: a classroom in 1975

Grisham explains his drifting years. He was raised in a strict Southern Baptist home and could not wait to get away, and Vietnam and the draft hung over his Memphis suburb throughout high school. His parents wanted college for their children but had no plan to get them there. He transferred between schools and landed at Mississippi State because his friends had.

In a large finance class in 1975, as Saigon was falling, a professor complained that the country should still be fighting. A classmate who had been wounded in Vietnam challenged him, which students simply did not do there, and took the argument apart. Grisham sought him out afterward. The veteran told him general business was a waste, that he should major in accounting, the toughest business major, and that it would prepare him for law school. Grisham said okay on the spot. At 20, he says, the light came on and he stopped drifting. Mel points out that justice shows up here too, and that looking backward at how past moments connected lets her trust the uncertain ones.

The second golden moment: a courtroom

The second moment was far more important, he says. At 30 he dreamed of being a big trial lawyer and spent all his time around the local courthouse, volunteering for court-appointed criminal cases. One day he stayed for a trial in which a young girl testified about being raped. The judge cleared the courtroom; as an officer of the court Grisham could remain. He describes an hour that ran through every emotion, with all twelve jurors wiping their eyes and the judge hiding his face.

At the recess he hurried out, then had to go back for his briefcase and walked past the defendant. He admits the thought that came to him: had that been his daughter, he would have wanted to shoot the man, and he wondered what that same jury would do with a father who did. Out of that came the idea of a fictional trial seen through the eyes of a young, idealistic attorney. He thought about it for weeks and then started chapter one. He had never written fiction before.

Mel underlines that the dream came second. He first made room for something he simply enjoyed, and she argues that having something that is just for you is worth it even if nothing ever comes of it. Grisham says he still enjoys it and that it is still therapy.

Rejection, a flop, and a very strange phone call

Halfway through the first book he caught the dream of writing for a living. He sent sample chapters and a pitch to ten agents and ten publishers at a time; his secretary mailed them while he was serving in the state legislature, and on Fridays he came back to check the rejection letters. Mel puts the count at 28. He calls his experience typical, notes that a first novel that flops is not unusual, and says almost every successful writer was rejected.

He is candid that he might not have kept going. After five years of early mornings his practice was sliding, he was making no money from writing, and he had no idea for a third book. He thinks he would soon have gone back to his original dream of being a trial lawyer.

What happened instead he calls a huge lucky break. His agent had the manuscript of The Firm in New York in the fall of 1989 with no rush from publishers. Over Christmas a bootleg copy surfaced in Hollywood, where someone posing as his agent ran off 25 copies and sent them to studios. Offers came in and a bidding war began before Grisham or his real agent knew anything. After threats of lawsuits the two sides made a deal, and on a Sunday morning the agent called for authority to take the highest bid. An hour later the film rights had sold to Paramount for $600,000, more than Grisham had earned in ten years of law. Mel pushes back on the word luck, citing a professor she had on the show who studies it: the five years of pages are what put him in the current for that to happen. Grisham concedes he plays it down for a laugh, and that the five years taught him to keep a story lean and fast.

Study the greats, and the not-so-greats

When the book hit the New York Times list in 1991, Grisham went to New York and sat at lunch beside a young bookstore-chain executive who remarked, "the big guys come out every year," naming Stephen King and Michael Crichton among others. Grisham thought, "okay, I want to be a big guy," went home to Oxford, Mississippi, and wrote around the clock to have The Pelican Brief out in 1992. He has published a book a year ever since.

Mel notices a pattern of patterning. In his third year of law school Grisham cut classes to watch the best trial lawyers at the federal courthouse, and was the only student there. While writing his first two novels he read a lot of popular fiction. Some of it convinced him he could do better, and some made him think he would never be that good; both pushed him on. The wall of bestsellers in the bookstore made him wonder who would want to hear from him, but he did not slow down. His advice: publishing needs new talent every year, so "If you want to get inspired to write, read debut novels." You cannot control what others write or what stores sell, so "work with what you can control." And read constantly; he does not know a successful writer who is not an avid reader. Mel adds that she releases two episodes a week for the same reason he writes a book a year.

Wrongful convictions and staying hopeful

Grisham describes reading a New York Times obituary of a man about his own age, from his part of the country, who had come within five days of execution in Oklahoma and was innocent. He went to Oklahoma, met the family and wrote a book about the case, which opened his eyes to how many innocent people are in prison. That was 20 years ago; he is still writing about it, still angry, and still frustrated by the lack of reform. Both he and Mel praise the work of Bryan Stevenson.

Asked how he stays hopeful, he goes back to basics: worry about what you can control, and ask, "What can I do today to make it a little bit better?" He and Renee work with nonprofits on childhood hunger, homelessness and wrongful convictions. Mel says heartbreak at the news means you still have a heart to break, and that she feels empowered when she looks at her own community. Grisham's closing thought: "The good outnumber the bad."

Conclusion

Grisham's story takes the shine off overnight success in the most encouraging way. The man with 52 bestsellers drifted at 18, was falsely accused in a hallway, disliked law school, wrote a thousand pages that needed a third cut out, collected a stack of rejections and nearly gave up. What carried him was unglamorous: a page a day at the same hour, knowing the ending before starting, studying people who were better, and staying alert to the moments that light something up. Mel's reading is that all of it applies well beyond writing. Pick a direction you can say in 30 seconds, do a little every day, and if the chapter you are in has ended, go write the next one.

This is a summary of "How One “Golden Moment” Can Transform Your Entire Life" from The Mel Robbins Podcast, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.