Why you shouldn’t wait for inspiration to strike with Harlan Coben

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1:23Harlan Coben: One of my very first book signings I did at the Livingston Mall, sitting in a corner of a room, I think they had only ordered three copies, and I'm sitting there and I'm playing with my pen and no one's coming up to me. And finally someone comes up and they ask where the new Stephen King book is. The second person comes up to me and he says, where's the bathroom? And then at the very, very end, an old man comes over to me and he says, is that your book on the shelf? And I'm like, yeah. And he says, you have a published novel. That's my dream. You're so lucky. And then he just walks away. Didn't buy a book, but he walks away.

1:55Harlan Coben: And it's like, wow, it's a different way of thinking about it. Yeah, it's just lucky to have written a book. You know, I try to appreciate every moment. Hey, everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast with Ted on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people who explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

2:23Harlan Coven is a best-selling mystery and thriller novelist. His career took off in 1995 with a popular Myron Volatar series about a former basketball star turned detective. Harlan's written 12 Myron thrillers and 23 other novels for a total of 35.

2:38Harlan Coben: Almost one a year, so I started when I was like seven. That's what I'm telling people. Keep telling yourself that. Many of his books have been made into hit Netflix series. I Will Find You recently became one of their most viewed shows ever. He's also co-written a book with Reese Witherspoon called Gone Before Goodbye. His most recent book, though, is nonfiction. Plot Twist is a writing guide packaged inside a memoir. We'll talk about the creative process. But I've been devouring Harlan's books since I was a teenager. So I wanted to start our conversation there. I don't think I thought much about it when I was a kid, but I think one of the reasons that your writing really resonated with me was I love the plot twists, but I also just, I really identified with the characters.

3:23And I think probably after superheroes, it was the next set of parasocial relationships that I developed. I felt like I knew Myron and Win, especially. And people have parasocial relationships with celebrities. But it seems like a lot of us have them with fictional characters, too. Do you get this a lot? Do you find that a lot of readers are attached to your characters?

3:46Harlan Coben: Yes. I mean, it's a self-involved question to answer, yes. But especially, you know, Myron and Win, the characters you're mentioning, because I've written 37-ish books, and 12 of them feature Myron Bolotar in the Myron Bolotar, Myron and Win series. I think the first one came out in 1995 and the most recent came out a year or two ago. When you have that kind of long-term relationship, it's different than a standalone. What is it about Myron and Wynn in particular? I don't think it's just the number of times you've written about them because I felt connected to them the first time I read them, which it must have been when I was 14.

4:22What is it about those characters that makes them more appealing than your average regular person?

4:27Harlan Coben: You know, I don't know. I think part of it is they can always say the line you wish you had said. They can be a little funnier than you are. They could be a little warmer. I always say that writers don't necessarily like to admit this, but when I created Myron, he was kind of me, but with wish fulfillment. Like, you know, we both played basketball in college. He was a lot better. He's faster. He's funnier. He's stronger. He's, I think, a better friend, probably. It's not like a conscious effort saying, oh, he's going to be this and that. That's I think the mistake a lot of people make when they create character is that they say, OK, he's going to have a drinking problem and now I got to show his drinking problem.

5:03Harlan Coben: The way really to develop character is by putting them in these circumstances and how they react, which I think for a lot of people is a lot of fun, I think is why they become endearing to you. You know, it's so interesting because when you say wish fulfillment, I think maybe not. It's wish almost fulfilled. I think about Myron. It's true. I mean, my read of him is he could have been an NBA star, but he got injured. And so he had the flash of greatness, but the wish was never fully realized. He's a sports agent turned detective, and he's doing really well, but he's not quite at the pinnacle of either of those professions, right?

5:43Harlan Coben: No, it's true in the sense that also I had to make Myron's life more tragic. Otherwise, it's not really interesting. When I created Myron, so I gave us both something that the other wanted, And I think that sort of helps. So Myron's dream in life is to sort of get married, move to the suburbs, have 2.4 kids, basketball hoop in the yard, barbecues with the neighbors. And that is my life. I live in suburbia doing all those things, have four kids. And I think Myron's a little envious of me because I have that and he doesn't. On the other hand, I lost my parents at a young age and Myron's parents are still alive, still breathing.

6:20Harlan Coben: And when I write those scenes with his parents and very close to them, I imagine that would be my relationship with my parents had they survived. And so I'm jealous of him. I'm envious of him in that way. And that tension, I think, has helped turn Myron into something very, very different. Myron Bolotar from Harlan Coben to use the third person with myself, which is really annoying. Wow. It almost sounds like you have a parasocial relationship with Myron. I guess I do. I mean, Myron's, you know, he's, of all the characters, he's my most precious. So let's talk about your writing. I think there are a lot of writers, I think probably any writer who's familiar with your work, envies the fact that you just, you publish books like Clockwork.

7:02I mean, every year for over 35 years, a bestseller by Harlan Coben comes out. And I think everybody wants to know, how do you do it? What are the habits? I think when we've talked about it, my biggest takeaway has been that you treat it like a job. And I'd love to hear you break that down.

7:18Harlan Coben: I mean, I think that's the key. There's a great quote that I read. It's credit to a lot of people, but I read it actually originally in a Philip Roth novel. And that is, amateurs wait for inspiration to arrive. The rest of us just get to work. And I know most of your favorite artists in any field, your creatives, let's call them, writers, painters, sculptors, architects, heck, entrepreneurs, people who are creating and building. The ones who try to treat it like it's magical or divine or have to wait for a certain mood or something, you know, strangely mysterious artistic don't seem to get the job done.

7:59Harlan Coben: And those who do treat it like a job, some days it's good, some days it's not. The other quote that I first heard from Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple, I don't like writing, I like having written. Sometimes focusing on the creation and actually creating something. I'm not trying to make it always magical and beautiful and blissful and zen, I think helps. So I do treat it like a job as much as I can. I think that there's a growing body of research in psychology showing that motivation is fleeting. It waxes and wanes. Yes. Habits are enduring. They keep us grounded. And I think you're describing a version of, I'm not gonna wait for motivation or inspiration to strike.

8:38I'm gonna build the discipline so that whether I have the idea or not, I'm going to sit down and produce something today. What does that look like from a routine perspective?

8:46Harlan Coben: You know, it's funny. I don't have, like, there's a lot of writers. My friend John Grisham, for example, he has a cottage behind his house. He goes to it the same time every day, same cup of coffee, no internet works from, I think, you know, whatever time, eight till noon, making up those hours, but does the exact same thing every day, and that works for him. And frankly, I'm a little envious that I don't have that. My routine is not to have a routine or to put another way, I'm a serial routinist. I keep changing up my routines. Most of my best writing when I was younger was done out of the house.

9:22Harlan Coben: There's too much temptation when you're home. And then I use up places. So I would use up a Starbucks in town here. And then I would find another place. Two of the weirdest places that I found is once I was dropping my kid off at school and I went to a stop and shop and there was a deli counter next to deli counter. There was just two tables. I don't know why. I don't know who would sit and have coffee at a deli counter. But I sat there one day and I wrote. And I wrote really well. So for six months, I would go there coming home with olive loaf. And that worked. I would talk to the guys, you know, say hi to the guys behind the deli counter.

9:56Harlan Coben: And then it just stopped working. So I had to find something else. So I'm constantly looking for whatever makes me right. And then I try to follow that until it falls apart. But for me, I don't keep forcing it. If that routine's not working anymore, I got to find a new routine. It's like a horse. I grab the horse. This is a cold analogy. I grab the horse. I ride the horse super hard. The horse collapses and dies. And now I look for a new horse. Yikes. And so that's sort of how I kind of, I know, that's a little dark. You got dark fast, Harlan. Yes. That's how I am, man. You've read my books. I go dark fast.

10:34This idea that you could use up a place or that you find somewhere to write and then it stops working. I've never heard that before. What is that? What happens that -

10:43Harlan Coben: I don't know. Now, it could just be, frankly, the natural rhythm of writing. There are days that you are blocked. That's just going to happen. There are days that you're not going to find the motivation. There are days when it's going to take another day or two. You put your character in a corner, and you're just not in the mood right now to get him out of it. And so that happens to me, too. That happens to everybody. And so maybe that's my excuse, but I'm always looking for some way of getting myself out of it. I also, I change up everything. It's not just changing up the place I work. Most days I start with handwriting on sheets of yellow legal pads, but I have literally 10 different kinds of notebooks.

11:22Harlan Coben: Big, small, spiral, some with lines, some with outlines, some with graph lines, some with dots, you know, every kind of thing. I have different kinds of pens. Everything from a Mont Blanc I received as a gift from an actor that I work with to, you know, the cheapest ballpoint you can find. and I'll just change up the instrument. Some days I go straight to the computer and I'll type on it. I have some kind of iPad-ish kind of a thing that I could write on that directly. I just sometimes just need to change things up, face something different and maybe that'll help get you started. That's interesting.

11:57So I think that actually speaks to your point then that you don't sit down looking at a blank page with no ideas. It sounds like most of the time you've figured out the plot in your head before you start writing. A lot of it, yeah. Where does the idea come from?

12:13Harlan Coben: Well, every book has been slightly different. I do believe in thinking on paper, getting it out on paper, but I can give a couple specifics. So, you know, well, I was hiking with my family a couple years ago, and I know all of your listeners, and it's really hip now to love hiking. I really fucking hate it. I don't know if I can use that word. I hate hiking. I don't get it. Like, I'm in the Ramapo Mountains. it's july it's a million degrees there's mosquitoes i'm sweating there's dust kicking up in my face like oh there's a tree there's another tree i wonder what around the bend oh another tree and i'm you know oh my i got to see a rock now i love walking i love walking city streets i love browsing in bookstores that i understand but i understand the fascination with driving out to middle of nowhere i'm thirsty i'm hungry meanwhile i'm whining and ranting like i am to you.

13:04Harlan Coben: And my family's rolling their eyes as they do. And I see on a path parallel to me, a little boy about five years old walking by himself. And this is how my mind works. I'm like, huh, why is he walking by himself? Suppose he came out of the woods right now and said, I've always lived in these woods. I've always been by myself. I don't know parents. I used to break into cabins watching TV. That's how I learned to speak. And I got food there or off the land, but I have no idea how I ended up in these woods. So they find them in the beginning of this book. And then I - This is the boy from the woods.

13:37Harlan Coben: This is the book, The Boy from the Woods. And that's exactly how it opens. He comes out of those woods. That hike gave you wild. There it is. Yes, that's exactly. That hike gave me the character. See, I love that you've actually read the books. Most podcasters have. But yeah, so, and then I said, well, how'd he get there? And I'm like, well, let's skip ahead 30 years in his life. He's now 35 or so years old. because it doesn't know his real birthday. He doesn't know if he's four, five, six years old. And he still doesn't know how he ended up in those woods. What a cool character this will be. And this is what I'm thinking now as I'm hiking.

14:11Harlan Coben: Now I'm condensing this because I just had that first thought. And then I go home and I'm thinking about the kid more and more and coming up with different things. And that's an example. And I can give you, you know, 37 others where something in my real life kind of, you know, I took a little twist on it. Now, for every one of these, there's 8 ,000 that doesn't work, of course. But that's how my mind is always trying to go what if. Okay, so this helps to, I think, I don't know if it solves the mystery, but it's at least a piece of the puzzle of why you need to break your routine. You need fresh stimuli.

14:46You need to put yourself in a different environment where you ask different what if questions as opposed to, I don't know how many olive loaves are going to inspire you.

14:56Harlan Coben: I think you're exactly right. Now, you know, the hiking context is interesting. It sounds like you haven't come around to loving it yet, but you at least see a purpose for it. You know, I'm thinking about there's a great paper by Opezo and Schwartz where they go and test the idea that walking unleashes creativity. And sure enough, they find that if you're walking outdoors, you get the greatest spike in the originality of your thinking. but even if you're walking on a treadmill facing a blank wall, just the idea of moving is enough to increase blood flow to the brain and that's good for divergent thinking.

15:31And so, you know, I know so many people, you were talking about the almost terror of sitting in front of a blank page or a blanking cursor. I know so many people who do that and then think I'm not cut out for writing and they don't realize, no, no, no. You do not have good ideas being tethered to a desk. you need to move your body to free your mind. And then once you've filled up your brain, to your point, that's when you sit down and write it out.

15:54Harlan Coben: Yes and no. I'm going to agree with that and not agree with that just to make this interesting. Oh, this will be fun. So the agreeing part with it is obvious. But the not agreeing part of that is you also have to be comfortable in boredom to be a writer. You have to embrace that it's going to be work. So that's the only counter I would say is if people are using the Adam Grant take a walk thing to stimulate the brain, hey, great, do it and go for it. If you're using it because that blank page is too painful to face, then you're probably not a writer. Interesting. Well, I find myself mostly agreeing with that.

16:26I think there's a solid body of evidence that boredom can actually stimulate creativity. Of course. But to your point, you have to be careful not to be seduced by the easy and fun temptations and say, okay, I'm bored. Now I'm going to do the hard thinking that will get me out of this. But it might not get me out of it right this moment. I might take a bunch of random mental walks and run into a bunch of brick walls metaphorically before I discover the eureka moment or the interesting path that now rescues me from the state of boredom. And I think that requires a really interesting combination of impatience and patience.

17:04I think you have to be impatient around saying, I really want to figure this out and I want to get to the bottom of it. And patient to recognize that your first solution may not be your best solution.

17:14Harlan Coben: Yes, I agree with that 100%. And the other thing I think about a lot, and this is something I'd love to discuss with you a little bit, is creation versus the actual process. So I think too many people are convinced that writing is magical and fun. And it is, but not every day. The process can sometimes be tedious. And it's like, huh, I expected the muse to come and sit on my shoulder and sing an angelic lullaby, and that's not happening. I expected God to come down and make my fingers move and that's not happening. But what's always magical, what always means something to me is at the end of the day, when I can see pages that were once blank that now have words on them, that's always magic.

17:58Harlan Coben: Do you agree with this or no? Yeah, that's Teresa Mabile's progress principle. So you always know somebody who's already thought of this, whatever. No, I know somebody that brought data to it. Of course. Yes, good. Teresa and her colleagues studied people doing all kinds of knowledge work. And they were interested in what is it that creates a sense of daily fulfillment in whatever job you're doing? And the finding that I think surprised a lot of people was what matters more than anything else is just a sense of progress. Today, did I move forward? It didn't have to be a huge accomplishment. It could be a small win.

18:36And that boosts your confidence. It gives you a little jolt of joy. And I think it's exactly what you're describing.

18:42Harlan Coben: Let me give you another example that we can discuss together, because I'm always curious about this. A lot of my friends, and maybe some of yours, have taken up painting, right? They love painting. They're artists now. They go and they mix the colors and they get the right canvas. And they just tell me this wonderful feeling of zen from their hobby of painting. And I get that. But at the end of the day, if they finish painting and the canvas is blank, if there's nothing on it, did they still enjoy themselves? This is sort of like the tree falling in the woods or the egg. Did you still enjoy yourself if there's nothing there?

19:18Harlan Coben: And I contend you will look back and not. The most annoying thing that writers sometimes will say is, oh, I write only for myself. I don't care if anyone reads it. That's not writing, that's therapy. That's like saying, I talk only to myself. I don't care if anyone's listening. Writing is about communication. If I write a novel and no one reads it, it doesn't exist as a novel. I need a reader or it doesn't exist. That's for me personally. And I think that's most people who actually want to create. You want to create because you want to tell someone something. You don't want to tell yourself something.

19:48Harlan Coben: You normally want to tell someone else. Now, I know I'll get a million people to say, no, I write only for myself. That's fine. But to me, that's a slightly different thing. And what I'm not saying is that it's not magical. When I'm really writing and I'm writing well, the hours disappear in a bliss that I actually can't describe. It's the strangest feeling in the world. But I'm not sure if at the end of that, if I looked up and saw nothing on the page, I might have enjoyed that moment. But I don't think I will give that day a satisfactory rating. And what's good about this, the good thing about this for you is if you're struggling or whatever else, I tell writers, picture the end product.

20:27Harlan Coben: That's okay. Imagine if you're a writer, imagine your book on a bookshelf one day. Imagine a reader telling you that they loved it. Imagine unboxing. If that helps give you what you call motivation, I'm all for it. It's not going to last motivation, but it will help some of those dark days. This episode is sponsored by Skylight. Between to-dos, errands, birthdays, and the dinner plan for Tuesday, there's a lot to keep track of. If you're feeling overwhelmed, let Skylight Calendar handle the rest. It's an all-in-one smart calendar that syncs seamlessly with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and more, pulling everything into one shared view.

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23:39You know, this is all interesting in the context of Plot Twist, of course, because you have just written a book about writing. And it raised a few questions for me. We've actually covered, I think, some of the most powerful insights from it already, indirectly. But one of the things that I wondered was, what changed about you as a writer from writing a book about writing?

24:02Harlan Coben: What I realized was, I was wrong about a lot of my process. I always thought I just made this stuff up. I sit down, I make this stuff up. And what I realized was, it's always something that actually happened in my real life, and my real life is weirder and stranger than I originally thought. it. So, you know, the, the cute line I would always tell myself was, huh, I write about, you know, people being murdered. I've never murdered anyone. Ha ha ha. But there is in a sense, just as I mentioned with the boy from the woods and promise me, there's always something in my life, something that goes on in your life that can inspire.

24:36Harlan Coben: So there's a reason I write missing people. It's because I lost a lot of people at a certain age and I always had this wish fulfillment. What if they were still alive? So that for me, I think was the biggest surprise. I was trying to inspire people to write, tell them the truth about writing, contradict a lot of the books that they've already read about writing, which I think lead people astray. But also realizing how much of myself and yourself, if you want to write, how much of yourself has to be in the book. I think one of the more surprising points you make in the book is you suggest that character versus plot might be a false dichotomy.

25:10and this really caught me off guard because I've always thought about those as two independent elements that have to be developed in order to intertwine. Why do you think the character is plot?

25:22Harlan Coben: Well, the examples that I used in the book, for example, I've used a couple, but one I used was Batman again. We're going to go back to Batman. So the origin story of Batman is Bruce Wayne is seven or eight years old. He's walking with his parents. His parents are murdered by a mugger. This is obviously traumatic for him. He decides he's going to avenge this, and he learns how to fight, and one day a bat flies through his window, which is the weakest part of the story, quite frankly, and he decides he's going to become Batman. So what I just described to you, is that plot or is that character?

25:53Harlan Coben: Well, it's character because it's developing how he became it, but really it's plot. I'm not telling you Bruce Wayne is a crime fighter, but I'm showing you by showing you somebody shooting his parents when he's eight years old being in his head and him witnessing it. That moment changed him. That moment isn't character. It's plot. And so when you start thinking of them separately, that's when I think people start getting in trouble and you make your story stilted. Oh, I got to make sure this character is a guy who this happened to. I got to make sure that I get that in. Just tell the story. And through what the character goes through in the story, which is plot, that's how your character is going to develop.

26:33Harlan Coben: So character is plot and plot is character. And it's also setting. I mentioned the boy from the woods before, right? If I had been walking in Central Park or I'd been walking in the streets of New York and I saw a little boy walking alone, I might've come up with a story about a little boy coming up like that, but it wouldn't have been the boy from the woods. What are those woods? Setting. So setting becomes character, becomes plot. Is this sounding messy? Yes, it should. That's how your mind should work. Don't try to divide yourself into these neat little categories. It doesn't work. I love that.

27:05Okay, that is actually a great segue to one of the other things I wanted to ask you about, which is in the process of bringing your books to Netflix, you've now gone from largely working alone to doing a lot more collaboration. And I'd love to hear a little bit about what you've learned from having to work through, what are we going to maintain? What are we going to change with a bunch of other people who might have clashing visions?

27:28Harlan Coben: Yeah, it's a really good question. It's a struggle I go through a lot. I mean, as a novelist, I get a report card that says, does not play well with others. You know, we are alone. I kind of look at it like when I have success as a novelist, that's, you know, hitting a New York Times with a subtlest or whatever. To me, it's like I won Wimbledon or I won the Masters. I'm a golfer, tennis player, it's solo. I stand alone. I get a trophy. And that's fantastic. But when I have success, I will find you out right now and it's doing quite well for Netflix. it's like I'm captain of a World Cup football team.

28:03Harlan Coben: And I'm the captain. I don't care who scores the goals. I don't care. I just want to win. And I want to celebrate with my teammates. And I love that. I love celebrating with other people. And at this stage of my life, I actually prefer being the captain of the team where I'm not doing as much. I'm still doing a lot, but as much as being that solo person who's standing there, who made the winning putt in the Masters on his own. Does that make sense? It does. It makes me think also about your collaboration with one of our past guests, Reese Witherspoon. I don't think anyone who knows either of you would have guessed that collaboration was coming.

28:39But what did you learn from working with her and from having to write with somebody else?

28:43Harlan Coben: Reese called me on the phone one day and she says, I have an idea. I kind of want to talk to you about maybe writing something together. And I'm being in New York next week and can we meet at your apartment? And I said, sure. But my mind was sort of saying this is not going to happen. I'm not that guy. I don't collaborate on novels. Other writers are big on collaborations with other people. To me, it sounds gimmicky and I don't like the idea. So I was sort of not really set to do it. So Reese came and I was sort of thinking, how do I nicely tell Reese Witherspoon? No. And then Reese pitches me the idea.

29:16Harlan Coben: And this might not surprise people. Reese is really good at pitching and she's really persuasive. And her idea was really, really good. And I was sort of like, yeah, wow, I could do something with that. And I take out my yellow legal pad and I said, well, what if she goes here instead of there? And we start bouncing back and forth and three hours pass. And Reese gives me the Reese Witherspoon smile and says, so are we going to do this? And I'm like, yeah, why not? Because also as we talked about, life's about new experiences and how cool to do it with someone like Reese. So we had a long discussion about how that was going to work.

29:50Harlan Coben: And one of the things that we also discussed was how, which everyone's always asking how did you write did she write one chapter you or another chapter there's no way that could work how could i sound like reese witherspoon or she sounds like me so day one i told her there's an old yiddish expression that you can't ride two horses with one behind be my hands on the keyboard i'm the writer i'm the one with the knowledge i'm gonna do the actual typing and writing but we're gonna go back and forth we talked almost every day or we emailed or we text she would send me ideas at all hours i would send her ideas at all hours I would throw her pages.

30:23Harlan Coben: I would ask her questions. One of my mentors, Richard Hackman, was the world's leading expert on team effectiveness. And he would always remind us that after years and years of studying teams and why most of them fail, that the first mistake that every collaboration makes is designing a task for a group that's better done by individuals. And you just gave us a pitch-perfect example of how to avoid that mistake by saying, look, I am going to do all the writing. Writing is a task for one person to do. but we're going to develop the ideas and the plot character setting, however you describe that three-headed monster, together.

30:58Yeah.

30:59Harlan Coben: And sometimes Reese would say, here's how I see Maggie walking into the scene. And she would just write it down, type it. And I would almost take it verbatim and put it in. But Reese is also a wonderful business person. As a lot of people now know, she runs a huge production company called Hello Sunshine. And she's had tremendous success as a producer and a creative. And that's a good sense. But one of the senses that I got to see is how well she handles people. She knew exactly sort of when to push my buttons one way, when to push them the other way, when I needed a shoulder to cry on, when I needed a little push.

31:30Harlan Coben: And I did the same with her. It just worked out. People say, would you ever collaborate again? The answer again is still no, except maybe with Reese. This is also a thing, I guess, with teams. And you can tell me what study is going to apply here. Neither one of us had our egos involved in like, I have to make sure I do this much. And it has to be 50-50. There was times she was doing more, times I was doing more. An old friend once told me about relationships are never 50-50. They're 60-40, they're 80-20. Sometimes it'll be the 20, sometimes it'll be the 80. And I use that a lot. I agree with that in my own relationships.

32:04Harlan Coben: And you have to let go of that. Obviously, if you're feeling neglected, that's different. But that's, I think, also worked for when I collaborated with Reese on this. Yeah, I think that's something a lot of people get wrong. And I see it in all kinds of relationships. I see it in teams. I see it in marriages, frankly, people doing too much keeping score and saying, OK, we got to make sure everything is equal. No, I don't want things to be equal. I want them to be equitable. And what equity requires is everybody puts in a fair amount and is trying to figure out how I can contribute effectively and support our shared goals and support the other people that I'm with.

32:40That doesn't mean we're going to measure out everything even.

32:43Harlan Coben: That's exactly right. This episode is brought to you by the National Education Association. A new school year always feels like a fresh start. New teachers, new classmates, new opportunities. As students head back to the classroom, parents and teachers are teaming up with the same goal, to have a safe and supportive school year. Every child deserves a bright future, and together, parents and teachers can make it happen. Help your family get back-to-school ready at nea.org slash backtoschool. Today's episode of Rethinking with Adam Grant is brought to you by Olympic Hospitality. The Olympic Games are coming to Los Angeles in 2028.

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34:56Okay, it is time for a lightning round. Are you ready?

35:01Harlan Coben: Uh-oh, I hate lightning rounds, but go ahead. I have confidence in you. I'm going to try to hold you to one sentence, though. What is the worst writing advice that you see given regularly that we haven't already covered? Oh, write for the market. This is always a disaster. Write for a certain trend. You know, you read dystopian thrillers are working. I'm going to write dystopian thriller. It's not going to work. I could explain it. By the time you write it, the trend will be over. And if you don't love what you're writing and you're doing it just that way, you're not going to have the interest to maintain it and finish it.

35:32Harlan Coben: So writing for a trend or writing because somebody told you, and also ignore whatever, when you get a rejection letter, for the most part, you should ignore anything other than the fact that it tells you you were rejected. Most people don't know why they rejected you. So they come up with a reason that might be complete and utter horseshit. So you have to have the ability to see what went wrong or what you can do better or why it happened rather than listening to whatever advice you just got because the writer said that your character didn't wear enough pink or whatever it was. Okay. So on your first point, are you saying I should scrap my plans for a romantic novel?

36:09Harlan Coben: In your case, maybe not. Oh, I beg to differ. Jump right on that, Adam. Come on, man. Jump right on that. Well, I might try to pull off a chapter of romanticcy just to see how hard I can make you laugh. I'll take it as a challenge. Look forward to getting it. Okay. What's your favorite piece of writing advice that you do not hear given enough? If it helps you produce pages, good. If it doesn't help you produce pages, bad. That's my life motto. So whatever I'm doing, I'm trying to, you know, get my life in a position where I have the ability, time, and desire to write. Okay. You are organizing a dream dinner party of your favorite writers throughout history.

36:54Who are you inviting?

36:54Harlan Coben: My all-time favorite writer is Philip Roth, so I would probably have to invite Philip Roth. I find Dorothy Parker fascinating in a million different ways, so I think I would probably invite Dorothy Parker. And then Robert B. Parker, who wrote the Spencer series, is somebody I never got to meet, but I was actually quoted in his obituary when he died as saying that 90 % of those of us who write detective fiction admit he's an influence and 10 % of us lie about it. So, you know, let's invite those three, maybe. I like it. Every successful writer has a random country where they become a hit. And I think one of yours is France.

37:41You are beloved in France. Why and what has it taught you about cross-cultural differences between people?

37:49Harlan Coben: I am the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction, huge in France. I keep yelling at my German publisher. I want to be the David Hasselhoff of publishing, but, you know, it has been the weirdest and strangest relationship with France. And I like to think they're just smarter than us and better readers. So maybe that's the self-involved reason. As somebody who tanks in France, France is one of my worst countries. I'm going to disagree vehemently with that. It's really interesting. What they tell me, and it's very hard for me to describe my own books this way, but I hope this is true of my books and, in a sense, the TV series.

38:27Harlan Coben: I can twist and turn like nobody's business. That's my thing. I can fool you. I can do all of that. But it's the heart. And tell no one, for example, what the friends understood about making it and why they made it a good film is it's a love story, really, more than it ever is a thriller. I will find you. there's really more story about a father searching for his son than it is about a thriller of a man escaping prison. And so I hope, I'm hoping that's what made you, when you were a young lad, Adam, attached to Myron and Wynn, is that you liked them and they had heart and that you wanted to hang around with those guys.

39:00Harlan Coben: So that's what I hope it is. I don't know if that's what it is, but that's what I hope it is. Yeah, that captures the trifecta for me really well. I mean, of course, the thriller element is what always fired up my brain, right? Trying to figure it out, wondering, okay, who did it? What's really going on here? And that to me was always the hook for getting into one of your books. But the lasting effect was much more, it taught me something about human nature and the way people think. And it was frankly, one of my first exposures to psychology because you would always sneak in these little, it was often a Myron observation.

39:34And you would anticipate something that then had 10 years of research behind it, I discover a decade later. And that, you know, that, that part was intellectually exciting, but I think you're right. I think at the end of the day, you're communicating human virtues and values through your flawed characters. You're showing us what's important. I think my, all of my favorite characters of yours are givers, not takers. And they are givers in spite of their limitations, as opposed to, you know, sort of being born with this superhero instinct or some level of just innate goodness, right? They have to struggle to be kind and caring.

40:13They have to push themselves often to go out of their way to help in situations where they really don't want to be bothered or get dragged into it. And I think that that is really the lasting effect for me.

40:23Harlan Coben: Well, thank you. That's very, it's very flattering. Okay. Last question for you. This is the office hours portion. I get to give you the mic. Like, what's on your mind? What do you want to know about human psychology? So I wrote down like three or four different things, and we can pick one. One of the things that I've noticed as I've gotten older is that we are always 17 waiting for our life to begin. That inside of me, I don't feel 64 years old. I don't think I'm any different in many ways than I was then yet. Maybe the knee is a lake a little more or whatever else. But what is that about? You want to hit that one?

41:04Harlan Coben: Is that one a good one? It could be. You tease the others though. So I want to know what the others are too. The other two are, so I've always told my kids this. And so I don't know where I got it from. So I Googled to find out who the first person to say it was. And literally every site that I visited said that I am the first one to say it. So I don't know if they're wrong or that I somehow did come up with it. But I tell my kids, you bring your own weather to the picnic, which I think is a great way of saying to people that a lot of it is about your attitude. And, you know, again, if I sit down thinking there's no way I'm going to produce pages today, you know, I don't think that's going to work.

41:43Harlan Coben: And the third thing I was going to ask you about was the human condition that we as human beings feel that we are uniquely complex and that no one really knows what's going on inside of us, that no one can actually read us. But conversely, we can read everybody else. We sort of do know what's going on in your head. And of course, by definition, that can't be true. And this fascinates me, and I write about this a lot. So you have three choices, Adam. I've given you three. They're all pretty good, right? Those are all great. Why don't we spend a minute on each of them? Okay, so the first one was, we are always 17 waiting for our life to begin.

42:19Harlan Coben: Why is that? And is that true? Do we all feel that way? Yeah, I don't know if 17 is the magic number. That's when you graduate high school. So I think that's a pivotal turning point in life for everybody in the sense that, number one, it's a temporal landmark, right? You're passing through a portal. You're going from basically being at the whim of adults to writing your own future and your own destiny. Two, we are future-oriented creatures. I think one of the things that differentiates humans from every other species that I know of is how far ahead we plan and dream and how vivid our images are of our future selves.

43:00And I think if you put those two things together, that's the moment in our lives when we have the greatest range of possibilities and also the fewest punctured dreams and hopes. And I think it's probably the most optimistic moment in life at some level. And it's the time when it feels like all the doors are open. And who wants to start when a bunch of doors are closed? Who wants to cross off a bunch of possibilities? I think we want to be looking out on that horizon and saying, yeah, there's a lot of excitement in front of me.

43:31Harlan Coben: I agree with that 100%. And I think having that other attitude, though, leaves that window open longer. I mean, if somebody out there is trying to, you know, writing is not a basketball career. When I was in college, I hoped to play pro basketball. That dream is gone. Never going to happen, right? but, you know, When the Crawl Dad Sings, which is a huge book that came out a few years ago, Delia Owens was 70. There's another new book. It's called Theo Golden. Also, author was 70, complete unknown. So if you're still out there and you still feel like you're 17 waiting for your life to begin, the motivational part is it can still happen.

44:06Harlan Coben: There are new chapters, and I'm encouraged by that. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. All right, let's go to number two. So the second one was, what was the second one? Oh, you bring your own weather to the picnic. Yeah. Okay. So when you said you bring your own weather to the picnic, first of all, I've never heard anyone else say it. So I'm with you that you deserve the credit. It's officially mine. It's yours. You know, what it made me think of is a paper by Lubomirsky and Sheldon on the basic mistake people make when they pursue happiness, which is they try to change their circumstances when instead they should be changing their actions.

44:43And the easiest case of this that I run into is when I have undergrads who say, I chose the wrong college. I shouldn't have come to Penn. I wish I had gone to this other place. And then they start working on a transfer application. And I just look at that and say, okay, but what drives your experience at college is not whether you're in Philly or whether you're in Palo Alto. what drives your experience is the friends you make, the classes you take, and the professors you meet. And so if you shift your actions, if you join a different set of clubs, if you change your major, if you start doing different things, you can redesign your own experience.

45:22Whereas if you just pick up and leave for somewhere else, you might still not like your friend group. You might still not like your surroundings. You might still not like your classes or, you know, really resonate with your professors. And so I think that's a way of saying you've got to not only bring your own weather, you have to create your own weather.

45:40Harlan Coben: Also a saying when you're looking at a blind page, yeah, maybe take a walk, but maybe instead grab a notebook, paper, and turn off your screen and write on that. So you're just changing what you're doing and hopefully that's going to produce a better outcome. But yeah, it's a lot about your attitude, that one, obviously. And the third one is the human condition being that we all think we are uniquely complex. No one can read us, but we can read everybody else. Yeah. Yeah. This is, I mean, at some level, this is the bane of my existence because the moment you recognize your own complexity, you should be granting that level of nuance and understanding and willingness to withhold judgment to other people.

46:18But it's hard. And I think it's hard because we see ourselves in 3D and we see other people in 2D. I think one of the things you do brilliantly as a novelist that does not happen in daily life is you actually paint people's circumstances in the same level of detail that you paint their traits and their character strengths and vulnerabilities. And I just don't think life works that way. Like I get to see what you say. I get to see what you do. I don't get to see where you come from. Like the movie starts or the novel starts when you're already in the scene, as opposed to the scene having been set.

46:54And so I think if we're going to solve this, I mean, psychologists have written about this for years is the fundamental attribution error, that we overreact to people's character and personality as drivers of what they do. And we underappreciate the situational forces and conditions around them that have affected their choices. I think what we want to do is we basically want to take what's normally background and try to make it part of the foreground. And I don't know how to do that, but you do.

47:21Harlan Coben: I love that line that we see ourselves in 3D, we see others as much as we don't want to. in 2D. And probably we can't change seeing in 2D, but if we recognize that we're not seeing the full picture, I think that helps. And it's fine to have opinions, but you have to somewhere along, have the humility, be humble enough to realize that you don't know everything. It's also to, to, to turn into a thriller thing is when people say, wow, all the characters have secrets. Yeah, but so do you, don't you? Don't you have something inside of you that no one else knows? And so I'm using it in a sense in both a commercial thriller-esque way, but also in a human nature way.

47:58Yeah. No, I love that point. And I think whenever I see somebody who's just filled with conviction, I think your certainty is not a sign of competence or expertise. It's just a sign of confidence. And it's probably a signal that you're overconfident because people who have complex knowledge are rarely sure of anything.

48:21Harlan Coben: Exactly. But as far as people I know are always sort of doubting themselves. Same thing with writers. If you know any writer who thinks they're really great at writing, they usually suck. Only bad writers think they're good. Here's my other phrase. Wow. So I guess that's bad for daily self-esteem, but good for ongoing learning and improvement. Oh, yeah. You have to be insecure to write. But, you know, it's a strange dichotomy because on the one hand, I suck. I'm terrible. No one's going to want to read this. It's crap. I have imposter syndrome. On the other hand, I have the hubris to think that you're going to spend$20 or$30 on a hardcover book.

48:53Harlan Coben: You're going to read 400 or 500 pages and spend those hours with me. And you should pay me for that privilege. I mean, so it's like there are two complete contradictions, and yet they work together as a whole. How do you reconcile those two? I don't. I just realize that life has some contradictions. I feel both ways. There's days I feel like I suck. I'm terrible. And there's days I have the hubris to think, you know, you should be reading everything I say. and grateful for it. That's the other thing. When you have doubts, there's two ways it can go for you. Doubts can paralyze you or they can inspire you.

49:26Harlan Coben: I try to let them inspire me. When you're scared, I try to write through the fear. I try to make it fuel me rather than paralyze me. And that's true for anything. Again, a lot of the advice I'm giving is on writing, but it's on life and everything else itself. We all get scared. We all think we suck. We all have those moments of doubt. I know Stephen King does. He wrote me something one time about when he's using my name as a character in a book. And I could tell he was actually nervous. Stephen King, nervous that I might not like the book. I'm like, you're Stephen King. And I said to him, Steve, does this mean I'm always going to feel this way?

49:57Harlan Coben: And he goes, yeah, you are. It's part of what you have. And so you use it to feel you rather than to make you cringe and to take the blows. It's okay, you'll be fine. Wow. Well, I think if - Yeah, it was a nice name drop-y story too. I just kind of threw in there. I didn't even noticing I was name dropping. Now I'm dumb enough to point it out. That right there is what I love about Myron so much. That is exactly the joke he would make. Thanks. So good. Harlan, this has always been a blast. I love just absorbing the way that you think and the stories that you tell. And I think it's a delightful and rare experience that the mind that created this story is as interesting as the story itself.

50:40And I'm excited that you're, you know, that you're in the nonfiction world a little more now. And I hope this is not the last. I just, I feel like a little kid in a candy store every time you release a new book. Wow.

50:53Harlan Coben: Thank you so much, man. I just, I'm very moved. So I will stay quiet for once.

51:01Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by TED with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glazer. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winnick. And our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hilash, Banban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivang, and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hansdale Hsu and Alison Leighton Brown.

51:33I think last time we were together, somebody thought we were related.

51:37Harlan Coben: it's a lot of bald right now in their screen a lot of shaved head in their screen right now it's true i went extra facial hair just to try to differentiate us

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53:03Every child deserves a bright future, and together, parents and teachers can make it happen. Help your family get back-to-school ready at nea.org slash backtoschool.

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