How One “Golden Moment” Can Transform Your Entire Life

23:26Mel Robbins:We have so much more to cover, and trust me, you do not want to miss a thing. So stay with me.

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24:22Mel Robbins:One plan, one price, and the best network for everyone. Switch to Verizon today. For new customers,$30 a line includes auto pay and switch discount. Additional taxes, fees, and terms apply. Unlimited data is restricted to on-device smartphone usage. Domestic data roaming at 2G speeds. I have an invitation. I want you to come with me to Vegas to experience something extraordinary with Oprah Winfrey. Yes, it's the ultimate aha moment. This is at Sphere. I want people to come along and experience consistent aha moments of awe, wonder, and joy. Aha, April 2nd through the 4th, live at Sphere. A call to wonder, to joy, and the ultimate aha.

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26:34Mel Robbins:and it could beat your insurance copay price. Save time and money on your prescriptions this season. Check out GoodRx at goodrx.com slash Mel. That's goodrx.com slash Mel. One of the first lessons I learned was that you have to do a little bit every day or it's not going to get done. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are here with the legendary John Grisham And he's unpacking some of the details and taking us behind the scenes of his most personal story ever, his own. So, John, I see in your story there's so much overlap with some of the things that we've experienced.

27:16Mel Robbins:Like, a lot of people don't know. A lot of people know that you've sold, what, 500 million books? Like, that's freaking cool, first of all. Congratulations. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. But that we both have had a million jobs. And I don't think a lot of people know, especially when they see you now and they hear Pelican Wreath. Oh, I saw that movie. Time to Kill. Matthew McConaughey was in that. Wait, The Firm? What? What? Like, I know, I've read all of his books. A ton of the people that work here that are basically the ages of our kids were like, my mom has read it. My dad loves him.

27:50Mel Robbins:Oh, my gosh. We had to push people away from bringing their parents in and their siblings in because you have so many fans here. But most people don't know that you have laid asphalt. You've sold underwear. You've transferred colleges. On and on and on. So what are some of the odd jobs that you've had that, in a weird way, still inform you? All of them. Every job. Every job you ever have is material for the rest of your life. What'd you learn from selling underwear? Well, I almost got fired for that. The customer is the Sears Roebuck store in a mall in Memphis. And I was a very reluctant employee.

28:34I was trying to go to college and commuting and not going anywhere. 18 years old, drifting. And this customer with Sears, the customer's always right. Okay. this guy brought back a three-pack of white boxer briefs or white briefs not boxers and wanted to return them and the package looked uh suspicious and i said uh i just i'm not going to take those back he said well you you have to and i said well they look used he said what maybe i said look sir i'm not going to touch the underwear okay and we got kind of loud i would say i'll I said, I will leave now. Fire me now. I'm not going to take his underwear back.

29:15And so he got loud and my boss came over and worked out a compromise. And I thought I was going to be leaving. I was kind of hoping he'd fire me because I'd had enough of the underwear. It didn't last long. That wasn't much of a job. But, you know, even the tough construction jobs, summertime work that I had, laying asphalt or driving a bulldozer or digging ditches or working for a plumbing company, that's all just what you need as a kid. And, you know, I was 16, 17, 18 years old because it makes you appreciate college. It makes you realize what you don't want in life. And, you know, I've got high school friends from way back who didn't see the opportunity and didn't go very far.

29:55But I just knew I wasn't going to do that kind of work for the rest of my life. I was determined. And my parents were not college graduates. They did not have the opportunity, but their dream was for us to go. But I was determined to get there. It took a while to find the right one. But yeah, I think those jobs are crucial to develop. I tell people, writers have got to, you got to try different jobs. You got to live different places, travel. You've got to have success and failure and love and hate and all the different things we go through in life, broken hearts and whatever, to have something to write about.

30:26You've got to experience life. And the more varied you can make it, the better. I didn't enjoy practicing law for 10 years. I hung in there, but I'm so glad I did because I would not be a writer if I hadn't been a lawyer.

30:41Mel Robbins:Talk to me about writing. Is it true that you failed an English class in community college? No, I didn't fail. I got a D minus. You were hanging on. Well, listen, I had an A-plus average all year. It was my freshman year of college, freshman comp and freshman literature. and I had a really strong high school English teacher and I was prepared for college as far as English is concerned. And so the course was fairly easy and I had straight A's and I was never a top student, but I enjoyed literature. The final exam came down to, it was one third of our grade. Our term paper, which was a big deal back then with sources and all that was, one-third of the grade, and then the other tests in class participation.

31:36And so we're taking the final exam, and we just started. And the teacher said, John, would you step out in the hallway? And I said, well, sure. And we stepped out in the hallway. She had a copy of my term paper, and she said, you have a very efficient way of words for a 19-year-old student. I didn't know what she was talking about And I said well okay Thank you She said no I mean this is very I haven't had many students who could write like this I said okay And she said I think you plagiarized this And I said oh no I said no no no I don't have to plagiarize No that's not true And she very dramatically Turned the paper around on the back of it She had a big F and she gave it to me.

32:29And I thought, this is not fair. I mean, I didn't, and I couldn't, she went back in the classroom. I went down to the boys, the men's restroom down the hall and I walked in, it was empty and I got very emotional. And I was crying and I was really upset by it because it wasn't true. And once I pulled myself together, I looked in the mirror. My face was red. My eyes were red. I said, I can't go back in the classroom like this. And so I waited and waited and waited. And finally, when the class was over, I went back into the class and picked up my test paper and gave it to her. And so I made an F on the final exam.

33:16F on the term paper. F on the final exam. And I got a D minus for the course. I left that school. I left it behind. I went somewhere else. I was transferring a lot anyway, by the way, but I didn't want to stay there any longer. But he's also being falsely accused. I didn't think about this at the time, but years went by before I started writing about people who are falsely accused and wrongfully convicted of serious crimes. it's very traumatic to be accused of something when you know you're innocent. And I still think about that episode. I'm lucky it's the only time it's happened in life. And it wasn't that serious, I guess, in the scheme of things, but it was pretty traumatic.

34:03Mel Robbins:Well, it also reveals one of your core values, clearly, which is justice and fairness. And And I think that there was probably a lot about that searing experience of standing in that hallway and feeling completely powerless and having no way to prove your innocence, no way to convince this woman in believing in you and just how utterly unfair that is. And there's kind of moral grappling in almost all of your stories. And these characters needing to dig deep, which we all need to do in moments where you have to believe in yourself in a moment when somebody else doesn't. Or you have to know the truth when somebody else is saying lies about you.

34:49Mel Robbins:You know, one of the other things that you said that I related to was this sense of you were 18 and drifting. And I have a feeling this is going to be a conversation a lot of parents send to their adult kids, especially ones that might be drifting right now. So, you know, if somebody's in that phase where I think a lot of people 18 to kind of 26 are feeling that acutely right now. It was a different era. Yes. It was just after – there were two major factors, I think, that sent me drifting. One was the fact I was raised in a very strict Southern Baptist environment, very conservative. And I couldn't wait to leave home, to get away, to drink beer and chase girls and have some fun in college.

35:34And that was a huge factor. Also, it was 1973. We grew up in a suburb of Memphis. And it was a middle-class suburb, a working-class suburb. And Vietnam hung over us all through high school. We knew boys who had gone and come back. Not in one piece. We knew there was always an effort to join the National Guard, to flunk a medical exam, all these schemes to avoid Vietnam. By 1970, I was 15 years old. But I was aware of what was going on. And it was a really dark time in American history, especially for kids who were facing the draft. And we were all staring at the draft. And so it was sort of a depressing.

36:16I knew I wanted to go to college, but I didn't know when. And I didn't know how to get there. And my parents wanted us to go, but there was no plan to get us there because they didn't know any better. And so I was just kind of, after I finished high school, I just sort of wasn't sure what to do. And I went to two different colleges. And then when I was a sophomore, I went to, I transferred to Mississippi State because my buddies had transferred to Mississippi State. And there was this one golden moment when the light goes off in your life and something happens that you don't know really what it is.

36:49It's happened at least twice in my life. I was in a classroom one day in 1975 at Mississippi State, and it was a finance course, big class. And the war was over. Saigon was falling, and the communists were rampaging, about to take over Saigon. We were trying to evacuate all of our personnel from the embassy there. It was a chaotic time. More of the Vietnam War still troubling our nation. And we had this conservative professor, a bomb thrower, who thought, you know, war is great as long as somebody else is fighting it. And he was complaining about the fact that we should still be there fighting.

37:30And we weren't spending enough money to, we could have won the war, blah, blah. And he made the mistake. There was a guy in our class who had been to Vietnam. And he was about three years older than we were. And he had been wounded in Vietnam. nothing really severe, but he'd seen combat. And he challenged the professor in a big way. And you didn't do that back then in 1975 at a conservative place like Mississippi State. You didn't challenge a professor. This guy was fearless, and he went after him. They locked up, and the student just absolutely ripped the guy to shreds. and we thought it was wonderful.

38:14It scared us. I thought it was wonderful. And so I later talked to the guy and he was a great guy. And he said, what are you studying? I said, general business. He said, that's crap, man. You don't want to study that. He said, study accounting. It's a toughest business major. It'll prepare you for law school. I'm going to law school and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. They said, that's the route to go. And I said, okay, just like that. I thought, that makes perfect sense. Law school is something I should think about. And that's when the light came on at the age of 20. Suddenly, I stopped drifting, found my place on campus.

38:51I found my place in the major, started thinking about law school. And I was a different person that one moment. What's interesting about that one moment is that it has the same core value, justice.

39:06Mel Robbins:you were rooting for the Vietnam vet because of your deep sense of justice. And the same thing was true when you got the backhanded weird compliment about what a gifted writer you were in a way that was very unjust. And so the dots are there. And I think, you know, when I was talking earlier about that kind of idea in 1980 that came to you through the friend for the firm about the firm that nobody leaves, that's kind of what I meant that there are these little things when you look in reverse oh even though the path was really screwed up I kind of see how all this connects yeah and I often think about that because in moments in my life even today where I feel just overwhelmed or challenged or I know I'm not quite sure what move to make next I typically remind myself well I don't need to know I just need to look backwards and say they've always led somewhere so I can trust that where I'm standing right now is going to connect to something in the future.

40:11Mel Robbins:And I don't need to know what that is to know that it will happen. And then your advice, you write one page, you take one step, you start chapter two. John, I have another question I want to ask you, but I got to take a quick break right now so we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors. And don't go anywhere. Because coming up, I'm going to ask John some questions about moments when he was filled with doubt. And he'll share with you exactly what he did and what you can do to push through it. Don't go anywhere. We've got more with John Grisham when we return, so stay with me.

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42:51Mel Robbins:Sign in to save on select bookings. Every job, every job you ever have is material for the rest of your life. You learn lessons from all of them. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And today you and I are here with John Grisham, one of the most successful authors of all time. So, John, the next thing I was curious about, what was the second golden moment? Far more important. I was a 30-year-old lawyer dreaming of being a big-time courtroom lawyer. That was my goal, to be a big trial lawyer. And because of that, I was always hanging around the courtroom. In our local courthouse, we had a beautiful courthouse and a beautiful courtroom and good lawyers and good judges.

43:36And that was my turf. And I was always there. And I volunteered for a lot of court-appointed criminal cases and trials. And by the age of 30, I had been through a lot of trials and I was sort of on the path. It's hard to make a lot of money in a small town practice. That was the frustrating part. But I also had the dream of being a big trial lawyer and getting bigger cases. That was where I was headed.

44:01Mel Robbins:Like that guy in Jackson Hole. What's his name? That legendary? Jerry Spence. Yeah, Jerry Spence. I think he passed away last year. Yeah. He was a hero 40 years ago. He was a big hero. Yeah. A famous lawyer. And so I was hanging around the courtroom one day when I saw something that changed everything. It was a trial that I knew about. We all knew about it because it was a horrible case. Young little girl had been raped, and they called the guy, and he wanted to go to trial. He was a bad actor, terrible guy. And they brought the little girl in to testify. She was, I don't know, 10 or 12. So, and the judge, my judge, great judge, he knew that it was going to be very, very difficult.

44:43And he did something I had never seen before. He cleared the courtroom, everybody out. Security was tight. Security was very tight. So, everybody left the courtroom. And he put a deputy at the back door, the front door, said, no one can be admitted for the next hour or so. And there were deputies all over the place. And being a lawyer, I was an officer of the court, so I could hang around. And I did. And the little girl testified. And at times, she was very brave. At times, she was very frail. She told what happened. It was horrible. It was horrible. And for an hour or so, she took us through every emotion known to the human soul, from love to hate to retribution to what you name it.

45:33We went through a roller coaster, and I kept asking myself, what am I doing here? And I don't have to be here. I knew three people on the jury, small county, and I was across the courtroom looking at them. And it's really bizarre to see all 12 jurors wiping their eyes. The judge was hiding his face. The lawyers were, you know, it was just horrible. And the only person who didn't show any emotion was a defendant who was a hardened criminal. And finally, she could not continue. And the judge said, let's take a recess. And I, thank God, I raced out of the courtroom, side door, went down the back steps and raced to my car.

46:17When I got to my car, I realized I'd forgotten my briefcase. So I had to go back in the courtroom, up the back stairs to the side door. and the defendant was sitting in the same chair. He hadn't moved and there was nobody else in the courtroom but a deputy who was kind of guarding him, but he wasn't going anywhere. And I walked by the defendant and I just had this thought. I said, you know, had that been my daughter and I could get this close and I had a gun, I would happily blow your brains out and I would look at the same jury and say, now, what are you going to do to me? for doing something that you all want to do.

46:56That was raw, intense, and filled with hatred. It was awful. But it was real. It was such an emotional moment. And I got through it. I got my briefcase and took off. And I had this idea of this story in a courtroom, my courtroom. A fictional story is seen through the eyes of this idealist, a young attorney who gets appointed to represent this guy. And here we go. and that was the origin of A Time to Kill. And I thought about it for days and weeks, and finally I said, you know, I'm going to start with chapter one and tell this story. I had never written before fiction, and that's how I got started.

47:45But if I had not been in that courtroom, I'm not sure I would have been inspired or motivated enough or ambitious enough to try something like that. And that's how it got started.

47:57Mel Robbins:And you ultimately wrote it. But when you went to go get a publisher, what happened? Oh, boy. Talk about rejection. Well, about halfway through, after a year or so, I had a lot of stuff written, still untyped, handwritten. And I began thinking about getting published. I had the big dream. the dream of writing for a living. That was the big dream. I could not shake it, didn't want to shake it. And that's what motivated me to keep writing and reading. Reading was crucial because I read so many great mystery writers, suspense writers, all the guys who were big in the 80s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. So when I finally finished the book, I sent the book off to New York, the way you're supposed to do it.

48:50You know, three sample chapters, a cover letter, a pitch, and you send it off to, I had a list of 10 agents and 10 publishers. Back then, you could send it to an editor. You can't do that now. It has to come to an agent today. And so I had 10 and 10, two lists. And my secretary, because I was off at the state legislature, she would send off 10 and 10, 20 submissions, go to New York. They came right back. Rejection, rejection, rejection. rejection, and I would come in on Friday afternoon from the state capitol, run by the office, and check the mail, check my rejection letters, and so that's how it went, and I don't, there were a lot of them, but you know, that's kind of the way you did it back then.

49:35It was, rejection was so much a part of it.

49:37Mel Robbins:Well, I think that's kind of the way you do it now, too. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, anything has a lot of rejection. I want to compliment you about something. I want to make sure the person listening or watching really gets the profound importance of something that you allowed yourself to do. You started writing just because you wanted to and you enjoyed it. Like so much of your story, which I find to be so inspiring, is that the dream didn't happen first, you were just interested. You had something you enjoyed doing just for the sake of doing it. And we've all had those moments where you get lost in something.

50:21Mel Robbins:And I think it's so important that we all have something for ourselves. And as I was listening to your story, you know, you said very early on, I've always loved stories. And I grew up with storytellers and I grew up with grandparents and parents telling stories on the porch. And allowing yourself and giving yourself permission, creating space in your life to have something that is just for you simply because you enjoy it, that to me is the fundamental lesson. Because even if you never published, even if you never wrote the 70 books or however many you've written, all of which become number one, And even if none of that never happened, having that space for yourself to do something that really is for you that you enjoy doing, it brings so much meaning to your life.

51:10Mel Robbins:And so I think it's really important. I want to make sure as you're listening, you heard the brilliance in that because the dream came after you created space for something that you actually just enjoy doing. Still enjoy it. Still therapy. One of the things that I'm really picking up on your story, because so many people get either derailed before they even start or they get derailed because of the rejections that start coming in. And what's interesting about your story is that if you're really paying attention, you know, listening as John's talking, that the getting started for you in terms of writing as a habit and just kind of leaning in felt like more of something that just brought a lot of meaning and joy to your life.

51:58Mel Robbins:and that that was the why. But I'm curious, how did you deal with the rejections and how did you deal with the fact that the time to kill, you get published, it's now out there, and nothing's happening. And yet you're still writing. So what is the lesson that the person listening can take about processing rejection or putting yourself out there? And it's not successful because it wasn't. Well, the submission-rejection routine that I went through was fairly typical for writers. The first novel that was a flop is not unusual in this profession. But there are a lot of stories, a lot of great stories about famous writers who were turned down repeatedly time and time again.

52:43Nobody wanted to publish their stories, and they kept on, they kept on, they kept. And finally, they got a break somewhere, and those are the great stories in publishing. Some of the great books we've read and enjoyed over the years were totally rejected. And I tell aspiring writers that some of these stories, they're fun stories to talk about. My story's fun. Almost every successful writer got rejected.

53:09Mel Robbins:I think every successful person. Yeah, sure. What's in your story is that you didn't stop. And it goes back to one page a day. Yeah. Whether the rejections come in, whether the book does well, you just didn't stop. And to me, time and time again, that always seems to be the unifying thing that happens in successful people's story. Yeah. And again, if I use a writing metaphor, if you're still here, the story hasn't ended. And the person that has control over where the story goes next, whether you keep writing or you keep showing up, is you. And because you loved what you did and you were doing it for you, it didn't matter if you got rejected.

53:52Mel Robbins:You were going to keep writing. I don't know how long I would have done it had I not had the success with the firm. I didn't have a story for the third book at the time. And I'd spent five years, three years for Time to Kill, two years for the firm, back to back. And I was getting kind of tired of the 530 routine. I was spending a lot of time there, and I kept thinking, well, you could be spending more time with your cases as a lawyer. I was letting some things slide, and the practice was not going anywhere because I was distracted. And at some point, I had to make a decision because I wasn't making any money as a writer.

54:38And I think at some point fairly soon after that, I would have had to have said, okay, I've tried twice. I can't keep doing this. I've got a great fallback position. I've got the bread and butter right here. It's my law office. And I can make that more successful. And I can forget about writing, and I can pursue my original dream of being a really successful trial lawyer. Yeah. And I had some heroes, some lawyers I knew in Mississippi who were very fine trial lawyers, who I tried to pattern myself after as a very young lawyer. So I think that's probably what would have happened. Thank God it didn't come to that.

55:16Thank God it didn't happen. So, you know, I feel I got a huge lucky break. I know you make your own luck, okay? But I got a huge lucky break with the firm. The book went to New York in the fall of 89. And my agent, who had read the summary and loved the idea, he wasn't too thrilled with it. He wanted some changes made. And I said, no, I'm not going to make those changes. And so we were sort of at a stalemate for several months. He showed the book to some editors. There was no rush to publish the firm. And he called me around Christmas of 89 and said, look, nothing's happening. It's the holidays.

55:59I'll sell the book in January. I said, okay, great. I've heard that before. And so, and this is where the fun starts. It's unknown to him and unknown to me, a scout. Back then, the major studios had scouts in New York who would hang around the publishing companies and pick up the gossip for a big book or a good book, a good manuscript. But a bootleg copy of the firm popped up in Hollywood over the Christmas break. And a guy got it out there, and I'm not sure what he did, but he pretended he was my agent. and he ran 25 copies of it and sent it off to all the studios and publishing and production companies.

56:44And he got, they started getting offers.

56:47Mel Robbins:And you didn't know any of this was going on? Not a word, not a word. My agent didn't know about it. Nobody knew about it, except for the guys in Hollywood. And so the offers got more and more intense. The bidding started. And at some point, somebody said, what about Grisham? Have we talked to him? Well, nobody had. Somebody called my agent. They had a huge fight. They threatened lawsuits and all this kind of stuff. And I didn't know about that. And it was obvious a big deal was about to go down. So they kissed and made up and had a deal. And they were ready for the final round of bidding when he finally called me on a Sunday morning.

57:26He said, hey, I need your authority to take the highest offer from Paramount, Universal, or Disney Touchstone for the film rights to the firm. And I said, film rights? What about the book? And he said, we'll talk about it later. And I said, whoa, wait a minute. He said, no, this is urgent. He said, they're sitting by their phones for the final round of bidding. And the word bidding had a nice ring to it. And I thought, okay, yeah, sure. Go ahead and sell the film rights. And he called back about an hour later and said, we have just sold the film rights. No, I said, okay, just for fun, how much money are we talking about?

58:08He said, I'm asking for$500 ,000. I hope to get$400 ,000 or something like that. And I said, you want my authority to go do that? And he said, yeah, so you have my authority. And he called back and he said, we just sold the film rights to the firm to Paramount Pictures for$600 ,000, which was more money than I'd made in 10 years of practicing law. I said, okay, look, let me call you back. And Renee and I sat down at the kitchen table. We were late for lunch at my mom's house. And we said, you got to be kidding. This is just one phone call. Just dropped in like that out of nowhere. Totally unexpected.

58:48And that's when everything changed.

58:52Mel Robbins:One thing I want to just tease out, especially as you've been listening to John's story, because you said you got lucky and then you kind of, well, you make your own luck. And the fact is, you had been working toward that moment since you were 18 years old. And we recently had this extraordinary professor who researches the science of luck. And luck is this largely misunderstood thing. Because it's really about the actions that you take that put you in the current to have those kinds of things happen. And the five years of writing, the kind of walking past the 28 rejections, the shrugging off the, you know, the flop of the time to kill book, the continuing to write, the sending it all off.

59:43Mel Robbins:Like all of that are examples of your philosophy of one page a day. move it down the field, write another page, keep moving it forward, that put you in the current to have all of that happen. And it's important for the person to hear that because it'd be easy to say, oh, gosh, timing, all this stuff. But none of that happens without everything that came before. Right. I don't downplay it. I tend to downplay it from— Yeah, I've noticed. To get a laugh. I love humor. I love to poke fun at myself. I don't downplay what happened, but you're right. It was a five-year journey to get to that point. I didn't realize it.

1:00:26Yeah. But everything I had done and also sort of honing the craft, learning how to write, learning the mistakes from a time to kill, learning how to keep the story lean and fast. That was all stuff I didn't just picked up. You know, I learned over time. And so the timing was very fortunate when it came, when it happened. The book came out when you saw it, May of 91, March of 91. And there was a lot of buzz behind the book when it came out. And it hit the New York Times list. And back in those days, a new writer on the list got a lot of attention. And so Doubleday said, can you come to New York for the victory lap?

1:01:09And I said, sure. And went to New York and had a bunch of interviews. I did Brian Gumbel, Today Show, which was a big deal back then. He was very good to me. And we were having lunch, a bunch of publishers in the room and booksellers. And I sat next to a very young executive from the old Walden book chains. Oh, I remember Walden, yeah. Every model had a B. Dalton on one end, a Walden on the other. And those are the bookstores I grew up with. And this guy, very young guy, probably my age, and he said, we just make an idle conversation. He said something that just stuck. I'll never forget it. He said, we're talking about writers, and he said, oh, the big guys come out every year.

1:01:52I had never thought about that. He said, yeah, look, Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Robert Ludlam, you know, Ken Fowler, they come out every year. The big guys come out every year. Elmore Leonard. And I thought, okay, I want to be a big guy. So I hustled back to Oxford, Mississippi, where we lived at the time, and wrote around the clock to finish the Pelican Brief, to have it out in time to publish in 92, a year later. And that's how it all kept going. That's where the book of year came from. That's been a book of years for 35 years now. Page a day, a book of year. You're going to keep your butt in the seat.

1:02:33Keep your butt in the seat.

1:02:35Mel Robbins:Talk to me about that. Yeah, you got to do it. You got to show up. You got to show up. You know, there was some real gold in something that you've said, and I want to combine the two and then pull it out for the person listening. You use this term where you patterned other trial lawyers and that, you know, that was kind of your backup plan. You're following the actions of people that inspired you. And then you said the big guys come out every year, which is another pattern. Can you talk just a little bit about how some of the secrets to success are literally right in front of you based on the patterns of people that you admire?

1:03:18Yeah. When I was in law school, my third year, third year law school is pretty easy compared to the first two. I didn't like law school either, okay? I didn't like law school at all. I'm not sure any law school.

1:03:28Mel Robbins:We have so much in common. Yeah. I couldn't stand law school. Couldn't wait to get out of it. But my senior year, there was a federal courthouse across town, and I would watch the dockets. And I knew when the good lawyers were in court trying cases, I would cut classes, which is no big deal when you're a third-year student, to go watch the lawyers, the good lawyers. And I was in court one day watching a civil trial, and two heavyweights were going at it in front of a jury. And it was magic. And I was sitting there, and civil trials don't draw big crowds, you know. And I was sitting there, I thought, looked around, I said, there are no other law students here, which was no big deal.

1:04:11Who wants to watch trials? But I did. I wanted to watch the lawyers. And so I tried to pattern my practice after those guys. And a lot of it is being able to discover cases, not chase them, but get them, which is probably the most difficult part. And then when I was writing, when I started writing Time to Kill and The Firm, that five-year period, I read a lot of popular fiction. And it was really kind of odd because I would read a book and I would say, this is crap, okay? This guy, this is terrible. I can beat this. And I knew I could. I mean, I knew I could tell a better story. I could certainly write better than a lot of popular fiction, a lot of really popular fiction.

1:05:01And that was inspirational. And I was also very honest, and I would read a book and say, I'll never be that good. Still do that. But it's always something better. You've got something to aspire for. I want every book to be my best book, okay, and to get better and get better. And so I was an honest judge of my own work, but I knew there was room for me on the bestseller list. And it was often the bad books that inspired me to keep going. Or I'd walk in a Walton bookstore or a B. Dalton, and they have the big wall of all the New York Times bestsellers and big, beautiful books. And I knew a lot of them.

1:05:38And I would get so sad thinking, who wants to hear from me? Look at all those books up there. Look at all those books. And I'd worry about that for a while, but I wouldn't slow down. And I tell writers all the time, look, publishing needs new talent every year. If you want to get inspired to write, read debut novels. These are first-time writers. And they're celebrated. And we celebrate them. We need new writers. Somebody's going to get published every year.

1:06:11Mel Robbins:You know, I love that moment where you're saying, who's going to read what I write? Like, who's going to read me? For the person who knows what they want but is in that swirl, because I did that with this podcast for many, many years. Like, there's so many of them. Who wants to hear from me? Lots of people have already done it. For the person that's saying that to themselves, like you used to in the bookstore, what would you tell them? You can't control all that. You can't control what somebody else writes. You can't control what the publishers publish. You can't control what the stores sell. Work with what you can control, which is your own fiction, and you can make it better.

1:06:52If you have a great story, something new, write it. And don't quit. You know, I tell writers, when are you going to stop writing? When I run out of stories. Or writers say, I've written five novels and I've had them all rejected. You know, what would you advise me to do? And I will say, well, keep writing if you have a story. Now, a lot of the great writing is God-given talent. Yeah. You know, there's some writers, like in any field, you have people who just have so much talent that comes through DNA or write education or whatever experiences they have. But you can also improve your own writing by watching those people, by trying to be like them, trying to be great like they are.

1:07:35Yep. And also technical skills that you can master yourself, you know, vocabulary and grammar and reading. Reading, reading, reading is the most important. I don't know a single writer, successful writer, who is not an avid reader.

1:07:50Mel Robbins:You gave some really, I think, cool advice, and I don't even know if you realize this. So as you're standing in the bookstore and you're looking at all the greats and you're thinking, there's no room for me. I'm never going to be that good. We don't look at the books that are crap and use it as motivation to go, if this garbage can get published, why not me? You know what I mean? Like, if this person can do it, why not me? And so I think there's patterns of both ends to not just look up. Look up for the actual skills of success and the technique and talent. Look down to remind yourself that there are people who are far less talented than you that are putting themselves out there, that are writing one page at a time.

1:08:39Mel Robbins:You know, the reason, John, that I release two episodes a week is because the big guys have two a week. and so the patterning that you're talking about is all around you and when you were sitting in that courtroom as a third-year law student watching the two big dogs go at it in a civil case and you look around going why is nobody else here who wants to watch a civil trial a person who wants to be amazing at it studies the greats you're a student before you're a great and that's everywhere in your story that you're looking around you're looking for great stories you're looking for inspiration.

1:09:21Mel Robbins:You're looking for patterns. You're looking for what the great writers do. And, you know, I even think that one of the reasons why I was so excited to have you on and talk to you about your story is because I know every single person, the person who's listening right now, they listen because they want the patterns from your life. They want to know what they can learn from you. And even though a lot of what you're sharing is about the way you think about writing, it is 1000 % the exact same way that you do anything in life. You know, I would love to hear more about the Innocence Project and what you learned from this work.

1:09:57When I was a young lawyer, I saw this obituary one day in the New York Times about this guy who had obviously just died. And he was very much like me, same age, same neck of the woods, same region. And he came within five days of being executed in Oklahoma. and I thought, how could this guy go to death row and be innocent? And I was just stunned by the story. I took off to Oklahoma. I took off and I met with his family and I said, I'm going to write this book. And they said, great. They were still mourning his death. Writing that book took me into the world of wrongful convictions. And once I realized there are thousands of innocent people in prison, it was a big wake-up call for me.

1:10:41And that was 20 years ago. And so I'm still writing about them, still published a book two years ago about wrongful convictions, still angry at how they happen, still advocate for criminal justice reform, still frustrated by the lack of reform. So it's something I'm caught up in.

1:11:05Mel Robbins:I admire that in you, especially having been a public defender and having Bryan Stevenson as one of my most inspiring mentors, for sure. We've had him here on the show. His work's incredible. He's one of a kind. What he has accomplished is truly amazing, and his book was very inspirational. We visited his museums in Montgomery and were just really overcome. How do you stay hopeful when the world is overwhelming and when you're in these cases and grappling with issues of justice in your work? How do you stay hopeful? I tell myself, okay, go back to the basics. Worry about the things you can control.

1:11:55So you can wake up each morning and see the news and just fret and worry yourself into a deep funk and stay there all day. Or you can say, okay, I'm not, yeah, the world's a mess, okay? What can I do today to make it a little bit better? How can I help someone today to make it a little bit better? And that's what I do. That's almost every day. Obviously, I can escape in my own world and go write some fiction, which is what I do. I still do. And I can also work with a lot of nonprofits and things like that to try to make the world better and get a lot of gratification from that. My wife and I are active with childhood hunger issues, homelessness, and wrongful convictions.

1:12:45We stay pretty busy working with nonprofits, and that's extremely gratifying. gratifying. So that gives us hope. We hope we're providing hope for someone else. Baby steps, small steps, a little something every day.

1:13:02Mel Robbins:One page a day? Yeah, one page a day. You know, I often think about this too because it is very overwhelming and there's a lot to feel despair about. And on one hand, I think the fact that you feel heartbroken about some of the things that you see is a good thing because it means that you still have a heart to break and you still care about goodness and justice and kindness and the dignity of how people are treated. And I agree with you. I feel hopeless when I look out there, but I feel very empowered when I just look in my community and I look around me and I say, what is one thing I can do today that really is part of a positive shift, whether it's in my home, in my marriage, in my friendships, in my community, in the world at large.

1:13:55Mel Robbins:And I truly think if enough of us just start doing that, everything is going to start to change for the better. And there are so many people doing that. Yes. The good outnumber the bad. That's true. I agree with you. John Grisham, you are just an absolute amazing amazing, generous, and very talented person. Thank you. You're being very generous. Thank you. You're welcome. You're very welcome. You're welcome. Thanks for having me on your show. Of course. And give Renee my best. I can't wait to meet her one of these days. She would love that. I would love that too. And I also want to thank you. Thank you for making the time to spend it here with me and John Grisham.

1:14:37Mel Robbins:And I hope that you feel so inspired and you are just going to go put your butt in the chair, turn the page, and start writing that new chapter. And in case no one else tells you, as your friend, I wanted to be sure to say, I love you and I believe in you and your ability to create a better life. And you got so many amazing pieces of wisdom and tools from John Grisham today. So freaking use them. All right. I'll see you in the next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play. Today, I am finally sitting down with a man that changed my life 35 years ago, and he didn't even know he had.

1:15:19Mel Robbins:What is that right? Without having any idea? Okay, great. Today, his exact morning routine that he has followed for 30 years, and this is the routine. Today, he'll share two golden moments with you that changed his, and he'll teach you how to use... He has written some of the most iconic and award-winning legal theory... Now, this episode means a lot to me, because 35 years ago... Now, this particular conversation means a lot to me, because 35 years ago, John Grisham changed my life, and even... Oh, my God. Today, you and I are here with the legendary John Grisham, and he is talking all about, and he's sharing what details from, what should we say?

1:16:10Mel Robbins:Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend, I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Sirius XM Podcasts.

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