Does it Take a Twisted Mind to Write Twisted Stories? | Better In Person

20:55A scary toilet may be more of a Harlan Coben thing than a me thing, but it did make me curious. So we came up with a little game to see how his mind works. We gave him a grab bag of everyday objects to see how he might use them in a novel. What's that? What the heck is this? Cool mint nicotine pouches. Well, okay. My guess is that it's really not a nicotine pouch. It's probably some sort of heavy dose THC cannabis. Or I would find this in somebody's room who I know never smokes. Why would it be in the baby's room, for example? Or would something be in here that's not supposed to be in here? I'll tell you another example.

21:32I was once taking these kids around for Halloween with a mom. Your kids? My kids. And I was with another mom who was taking her kids. And she had the, I'm looking over there, Poland Springs water bottle with her. And one of the kids spilled stuff on him. So we grabbed like the water bottle to do it. And she's like, you can't, it's vodka. I had to. Outed. Outed. There's a novel right there. I knew Harlan would be good at that. Okay, back now to a slightly more serious part of our conversation. I want to talk to you about writing, I really want to know how much feedback you solicit and get and who you get notes from.

22:12Nowadays, very, very little and very, very few. So by contract, I don't think it's by contract, but I sent to my publisher at about the 100-page mark, mostly to calm them down and make sure they know I'm doing it, it's okay, it's good. I really don't want to hear any criticism at that stage, and everybody knows that because, you know, I am fragile in the sense that if you criticize me early, I'm going to freak out. Let me finish and then you can tell me what you think might be wrong with it. But if you tell me in the middle, I'm like, oh my God, the whole thing doesn't work. You know, being a writer still to this day, a lot of insecurity, a lot of self-loathing.

22:51Do you get stuck ever? No. I get stuck all the time, but I learn it's part of the process and I use it. I try making it as a challenge. What do you do when you get stuck? I just sit there and I stare until my ears start to bleed. I mean, the thing you can't do is say, oh, I'm stuck today. I'll go shopping, you know, or I'll go watch what's on TV. You have to keep staring at it and you have to figure out ways and challenges or take a walk or do whatever it's going to be. Something that will stimulate you out of that. But a lot of it also is, you know, it's like not going to the gym. You have to make yourself go to the gym.

23:23And so a lot of times writer's block is just, I just don't want to go to the gym that day. But if I don't write, I'm not a writer. So what the hell am I? I'm nothing. You know, I beat myself up a lot. I think you have to. You have to have that sort of insecurity. You have to still care. Only bad writers think they're good. We all have imposter syndrome. We all suffer through all those things. Stephen King still suffers from it. Like, he sent me a book at one point early, because this is very flattering, but he was using me as a character in the book. And he asked permission. Like, I'm going to say no to Stephen King.

23:55It wasn't the most flattering thing in the entire world. But he sent me the book to read. He goes, I want to send you the book. Make sure you read it and like it. And I'm like, I could tell he's nervous, my reaction. I'm like, Steve, are you actually nervous? He goes, yeah. I go, damn, so this shit never goes away? He goes, no, it never goes away. So if Stephen King still has it, I felt much better that I could still have that fear. And I think that's what keeps you, when you stop having that fear, maybe you're starting to be that writer who phones it in. I still worry every book. I'm in a panic every book, every TV show.

24:28Oh, my God, they're going to hate it. I'm done. I'm going to be discovered as the imposter syndrome thing comes in. And I think in my case, that fuels you. You have to let those things fuel you, not paralyze you. That's the key to writing. Any of those sort of fears, for most people, it will paralyze them. For me, it fuels me. So this is fascinating to me because I think anybody who's ever tried to not just write a book but make anything could identify with that. I remember the best writing advice I ever got. I was going to do my first book, and a guy who'd written several books said, there will come at least one or two points in the next few months where you are convinced that you don't have a book here and that you should stop and do something 100 % convinced.

25:10That you suck. And then when I got that moment, if he hadn't told me that, I probably would have stopped. But your advice, as much as I like it and identify with it, I think sounds alien to a lot of people in the world now where so much advice is about how to life hack your way to better execution. I think that people don't want to embrace any lack of confidence. I think people don't want to have any self-doubt. They just want to march on to the positive result. Do you have any advice for people how to embrace your inner anxiety or inner stress? Because psychologists talk about positive stress and negative stress.

25:46It sounds to me like you maximize the positive stress and make it work for you, But people don't seem to be comfortable with that in general. First of all, I think people should stop listening to any of that advice. I'm online sometimes. I can't believe the shitty advice that's all over social media. And I'm publishing. Oh, my God, I could lose my—I could go crazy all the bad advice. So first of all, turn off a goddamn computer. I hate to knock because I'm sure you'll have these people on, and people are going to be listening. So I'm going to get a lot of shit about this. I can't stand the term self-care.

26:15None of us are not being selfish enough in our life. You're not thinking of you first. Yes, you are. In fact, you're thinking of you so much that you keep looking at social media to find things to tell you that you're not thinking about you enough. That's how much you think about you all the time. Stop it. Just get to work. Do what has to be done. I treat this job like I'm a plumber. Plumber can't one day wake up and go, oh, my God, I can't do pipes today. And every artist, I hate that term too. I like to prefer the creator or whatever else. But every person I know who produces pages, be they your most literary writer or your most commercial romance writer, they treat it like a job.

26:54They treat it as something that has to be done. And so I stop. Just stop listening to that advice. And how come every person I see online who talks about dating has only dated narcissists? They're never the narcissists. You never go, you know what? The problem with this relationship? I was a narcissist. No, I've dated 47 straight narcissists. Maybe it's you, honey. Maybe it's you, sir. So, you know, we just, we love these blind spots. And this is actually how I develop character as well, watching these things online and getting pissed off the way I'm at ranting at you. This can trigger something that can be a book.

27:30That was very helpful.

27:35This episode of Better in Person is presented by ChatGPT. ChatGPT work moves beyond answers into getting real work done. It's a new experience in ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects across web, mobile, and desktop. You can give ChatGPT work a goal and have it gather context, choose an approach, create the output, and continue iterating, all while you stay in control. It can help turn messy inputs into useful outputs like briefs, spreadsheets, dashboards, presentations, prototypes, landing pages, and workflows. You can even ask ChatGPT work to take on entire workflows with a single request. Here's an example.

28:13It can turn customer research into a campaign brief, use that brief to create marketing assets and adapt those assets for different markets, carrying context through every step. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today. A few people that we spoke with beforehand who we told we were going to speak with you, including some family members and so on. They often mentioned your wandering mind, as it's called, as a tool, essentially. And I'm curious to hear, first of all, do you agree with that? And how does it serve you well? Well, I assume by wandering mind, they mean that I get easily distracted.

28:58And sometimes my kids will be like, oh, dad's off. So I'm always looking for what can I use? How can I use this in a story? How can I turn this around? How can I make this a writer's prompt? And ideas come to me at strange times, and I have to sort of follow them out. So I can be rude company at times. I'm not the most focused, laser focused on you sometimes. And so the people who know me are sort of used to it. That's probably, I assume, what they're referring to. But when I, like, I think all of us, we try to figure out how we got to where we got, whether it's a good place or a bad place, whether we like the result or not.

29:32I try to isolate whatever the variables are because most of us as humans, I'd like to think are pretty similar, right? We all want to be loved. We want to eat food that tastes good. We want to be protected and all that kind of stuff. But then there are these variables that really range a lot from person to person. So for me, I think as a writer, the things that I thought made me be able to do it were that I'm a trier. I'm going to try hard. I may not have the most natural ability, but I'm going to try. And the other is that I'm a noticer. And I think that comes from being the youngest in a big family where I wasn't talking.

30:07When you think about you, what drives the ability to write what you do and to make the books that you write into things that millions and millions and millions of people really love? And not just because it's twisty and not just because it puts you on edge, but because it connects with them somehow. What's that? I think probably my parents and their early deaths. I mean, both of them were dead by the time they were my age. Both of them were extraordinarily bright. I think both felt frustrated by their relative station in life, decidedly middle class, seeing people. They weren't bitter, but seeing people who were, they felt probably not as smart or talented as they were being their bosses.

30:53One of the last things, my father lost his job when he was 57 and died of a heart attack at 59. And I remember him saying to me, try never to work for somebody else. Try to be your own boss. What kind of work did he do? He was trained as a lawyer, but at that time he had been like an executive sort of in-house legal counsel for a company that did laundry services. So like when restaurants every night, somebody goes and picks up the dirty linens and the dirty sheets and things like that. I thought that was just the mafia. It might have been. Well, also my family, not my father and my mother, but my grandfather were definitely mobbed up and connected.

31:28My whole town was mobbed up. What town? Livingston, New Jersey. Livingston, oh. Oh, yeah. So part of it was that. Part of it, they were sort of ambitious. And I think all of my brothers and I think all are ambitious. I always have what I call incremental ambition. So like when I was first wanting to be a writer, I was like, I just want one day to have a book published by a real publisher. I just want to one day walk past the bookstore and see my book. Okay, two books. Just a show. It wasn't a fluke. Just two books. Okay, if I could scratch out an embarrassing living just enough so I could say, that would be great.

32:02Okay, if I could one day for just an hour skim the last slot on the New York Times, like number 15, just burn. If I could be top 10, top 5, 1. Dayenu, dayenu, dayenu. So, yeah, I kept going like that. And back in those days, the one advantage that I had was there was no internet. So, like, we were talking earlier about the shitty money I was making for paperback originals. I didn't know how low level I was. I thought I was the cat's ass. I had a book published by a major publishing house. I had no idea I'd be ranked number 1 ,347 ,000 today on Amazon. There was no Amazon. I thought I was pretty hot shit.

32:36You know what I'm saying? So I also had reason to just keep going on. And I was damn ambitious about the fact that I was going, and I believed that I had the talent that I was going to make it as a writer. My parents' early tragic deaths, which I've written about in essays, I think in the end, and this is not a silver lining, and I know I don't believe you have to suffer for your art, but there's no question they make me a better writer. There's no question the hard thing that we were talking about before comes from the grief that I've suffered. That in many ways, most of my books deal with parent-child relationships and that bond and what it's like to lose somebody in all these books.

33:14And I don't think it's a coincidence that I always have missing people. Because with missing people, there's always that hope. There's always the hope that maybe they can come back and you can be made for them. Often, not just missing, but we're pretty sure they're dead. There are dead people who aren't dead in your books. Exactly. And what greater hope? I mean, my recurring dream with my father is that he's alive. and there's always in that dream like he's has some issue with bills or whatever else i'm trying to not to worry about that anymore i have money and all that there's always a moment in these dreams i'm so happy he's alive and he just sort of accepted and then there's that moment in the dream when you realize it's probably a dream and you're gonna wake up and he's still gonna be dead and i'm actually trying to grab onto him like to bring him with me and still to this day my father My father died in 1988.

34:06I still have that sort of thing with my parents. In my 20s and early 30s, I did seven eulogies by the time I was 32 years old. I think I only did one since. So that period of time was probably very informative on what I write. So Stephen King likes to talk about how if he didn't have writing, he'd have been dead a long time ago. That it was a way for him to kind of process a lot of emotion. When I think about you, You seem so solid as a human, you know. But then when I read you, I feel a fragility in the stories and the characters and the emotions. And that's what makes it compelling. So what about you?

34:49If you didn't have this, is the writing what helps you turn a fragility into personal solidity or vice versa? Or is that all your imagination? It's a really good question. I don't know if I would go as far as Steve does. And he's had abuse, you know, drug problems and things like that that he's been very open and honest about. And I don't know if I'd be losing my mind. But that said, I know that if I'm not writing well, my life is not in balance. So what do you need to balance in your life? Well, you know, eating well, exercising, your relationship with your partner, your relationship with your kids, your friends, your social life, all of those things.

35:25All of those things can be great and balanced. But if my writing is not in balance, that's all going to tilt and fall over. You also just answered a question that my daughter sent in when I told her I was talking to you today. She said, does it take a twisted mind to write twisted stories? I think it's no. I think there's one of my favorite quotes that I use is from Flabert, who says, to be regular and orderly in your real life so you can be violent and original in your work. I love that. I'm also a big guy on opposites. You can't have a left without a right. You can't have an up without a down.

35:58You can't have the darkness without that light. Most of my books take place in like suburbia or placid pools where even one stone can make a ripple. If I'm writing that book in a churning ocean, I could throw as many rocks as I can into that ocean. You're not going to even see them hit. So you need the placid pool in order to make those ripples. You told me that Netflix, I guess, discovered that a suburban house on a movie poster is the scariest thing around. That's scariest, but for my books, for my stuff, they draw the most eyeballs. What were the other options? Well, we have dozens. I mean, so this is a little giving you guys some Netflix inside info, I guess.

36:36Hope Netflix isn't mad. But Netflix normally has, I'd say, between 15 and 20 posters for every TV show. And you may notice this, right? You go on to the show and one day, let's say my show's safe, it'll have a picture of Michael C. Hall. And the next day it'll have two women and next day it'll have a suburban street, a cop, whatever it is. They change it up to try to figure out, I think, your personal algorithm and also just to see what hits you. And then they love to play this kind of game with me where they'll say, OK, guess which poster did the best. And to me, it's always a poster that has no appeal whatsoever.

37:10But it's always a house. It's always a suburban scene or like a gate in front of a house. Those are the things that I guess signal to people something's going to get disturbed in suburbia. And that's the appeal of my shows. I know you're always telling your family that I'm really going to stop soon. But at least that's what we've been told. Do you really tell them that? I'm 63 years old and I'm working harder doing more stuff than I've ever done before. I never had a month like this past month. Never. But I feel lucky about that right now. I'm not ready to give that stuff up. But every year I kind of think like when I was just a writer before I had TV, I always joked I didn't really have a real job because you just make up your own hours.

37:52Now I do have meetings and things I have to do. Do you like collaborating, generally? Because you seem like you like alone time. I like both. I mean, I'm a, you know, I'm a writer. I spent most of my life alone in a room, and I don't regret one day of that. How many people can say that? I am an introvert, but I am a pretty good introvert. I can fool you into not being alone. And you can get yourself up for the... Exactly. Then I'll go back and I'll collapse. But then you feel depleted? Yeah, I will. I do. I feel depleted afterwards. Do you think most writers are introverts? I don't know if most are, but the ones I know, yeah.

38:29We're pretty social with each other, and they're actually fairly normal. But we do need our alone time, and we do need that time. And it works for me because I'm alone in a room and I'm writing. And then there is a little inkling like I'd like to be on set or be whatever. And then I go to set for two or three days and I'm like, oh my God, get me alone in a room again. So it actually feeds off each other in terms of the writing rather than depletes me in one way or the other. Should we talk about Netflix a little bit more? How is it good for you, the Netflix deal? It's fantastic because, you know, listen, I'm a commercial writer and I say that with no embarrassment.

39:05I want to sell a lot of books. Did you ever want to be a literary figure? Not that you're not. You are a literary figure. No, I know what you're saying, but let me say this. Every writer who's ever sat with you or you've ever talked to wants two things. more sales and more critical acclaim right i don't care who you are every writer who denies that's a liar oh i don't care about sales i only care bullshit bullshit i only care i don't care if all the reviews are crappy i sell some books bullshit everybody it's human nature so let's stop pretending with that bullshit i am the berkeley tree in the woods if a tree falls and nobody hears this make a sound if i write a book and no one hears it you know that's when When people say to me, I want to write but only for myself, that's like saying I only talk to only myself.

39:46It's fucking nonsense. That's therapy. That's not writing. How does it relate to Netflix? Netflix is in 190 countries. I didn't even know there's that many countries. I think there's only 195. Not in like three, like North Korea and two other places like that. 190 countries. Over 300 million families subscribe to it. You led Netflix in minutes watched. That's correct. Fulmey once was the number one show in terms of viewership that they had. Number one. I'm very proud to say that. Congratulations. Thank you. It's remarkable. But that's like 100 million families watched it, all eight episodes in the first 90 days.

40:21Do you ever try to picture what they look like in mass? No. I don't have that good of an imagination. Do you think much about what the effect is? Not the effect necessarily that you're having, but just what the effect is of that mass of an audience. Because honestly, there aren't that many things in the world that unite that many people. No, but I'm happy for it. I'm grateful for it. It's such an honor and privilege. It's the other side of this thing. And I don't want to sound Pollyanna. But what you do and what I do, that people will listen to you and choose that. Out of the zillions of podcasts, they count it as zillions of books.

40:53You walk into a bookstore, there's thousands of books. That you pick mine or you go on Netflix and you pick my show. That's a responsibility. I take very seriously. If you're disappointed, I'm upset. myself i'm not happy i really want to try your wandering mind again i think we've got you in a nicely agitated state okay this time harlan pulls out a baby monitor in the form of a sock he is a good sport but i sense he is starting to hate this game part of the problem with this is you're kind of making it seem like something that's magical or that i snap like this yeah it's sitting around staring at the wall for hours take your time sit and stare at what is that the fuck is a dream sock Am I allowed to curse on this?

41:34FDA cleared smart baby monitor. Okay, so this, see, this I would think about how I could make this, like, be tracking somebody, or it would match up to somebody else. Or imagine you put the sock on your child in the middle of the night, and then when you wake up, the pulse is going, but it's not on your kid's sock anymore. Oh, boy. See, there you go. Right there, we have some kind of story. It's like the baby monitor. Like, I always think, what if I heard something weird over the baby monitor that I wasn't supposed to do? So wait, who's the sock on if not my kid now? I don't know. That's going to be the mystery.

42:08Come on. You've got to read 350 pages before you kind of find out where that is or why someone's messing with you. That was fantastic. All right, last question. You're writing a play? I am. I'm trying to write a play. I've been commissioned by a group in London on the West End. And their pitch to me sort of was interesting. Mouse Trap has been playing for 73 years. We need a new thriller or a new mystery. And at first, it was one of those where I had no idea, no thoughts, no nothing. And then I had the first scene. This is the only way that works. Give us something. I'm not going to give you that.

42:42But I gave them the first scene, and they were like, ooh, that's good. And I go, that's all I got. And then I went home that night. I literally had the rest of it by the next morning. That's happened to me twice in my life. Lazarus, too. I don't understand how a mind like that works. I like to have a mind like that. I think, right? But it's all I do. Like other people wake up and they have to do their jobs and go about their business. This is all I do. I got nothing else. That's it. So this is why you're good at it. I have nothing else. I don't know, but I don't come up with like a play in the morning and it's done by the evening.

43:11I've never done that. Well, the idea is. Now the hard part, I got to do it. The hard part is writing. Ideas are not that hard. But the hard part is, as you know, is the actual. You've written enough books to know. You gather all the information. That's kind of fun. And you're trying to organize it. That's kind of fun. But only writing counts as writing. Everything else is flotsam and jetsam. Can I just say, I'm very happy for you. Thank you, man. Happy for you. I think it's obviously a great career, but I also think you're kind of an inspiration. Thank you. But also, I just don't sniff a bit of cynicism in you.

43:41And I really appreciate that because I think when you're successful at something, you can start to take for granted. Like, well, of course I was going to be because everybody else sucks. And I don't sense that in you. Thanks, pal. So thanks. Thanks, pal. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, everybody.

43:59I hope you enjoyed this audio edition of Better in Person with Harlan Coben. But remember, this is a video show. And if you're only listening, you are missing out. You can watch this episode of Better in Person on the Freakonomics YouTube channel or on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback is always welcome. Our email is radio at Freakonomics.com. We will be back soon right here with more Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too. It's hard to capture my raw animal magnetism in photography. Good luck, guys. You have your jobs really cut out for you today.

44:42Thanks again to ChatGPT for sponsoring today's episode of Better In Person. ChatGPT can help teams move from goals to real outcomes. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today.