How to Reinvent Yourself and Start a New Chapter

Mel opens by calling the interview a full-circle moment: John Grisham’s The Firm changed her life 35 years earlier, when she was miserable in her first year at Boston College Law School. She had entered law school because friends were doing it and because she had disliked working as a paralegal, but quickly realized she hated the academic work, cried frequently, and drank heavily. Reading The Firm—staying up two nights in a row to finish it—gave her the crucial realization that Grisham was both a lawyer and a successful fiction writer. She did not have to practice law forever. She stayed in law school, became a public defender in New York City, and later left the legal profession for her current career. Grisham says he finds stories like Mel’s touching but difficult to believe because, when he began The Firm, he was still a young lawyer with children and no idea what would happen. The story came from a 1980 conversation in law school: a friend described a strange tax firm that seemed to be the kind of place employees never left, “like it was owned by the mafia.” Grisham stored that detail for years. After writing his first novel, A Time to Kill, he wanted a story that would be more fun to write and read, and his wife, Renee, had always liked the law-firm idea. He wrote The Firm in two years; when it was published, it transformed both his career and his family’s life.

Grisham says the most important practical lesson he learned was to work on a goal every day rather than waiting for a large block of time or inspiration. While writing A Time to Kill by hand on legal pads, he sometimes went weeks without producing a chapter. Renee would ask where the latest chapter was, forcing him to admit he had not written it. He eventually made himself get up at 5 a.m. and write at least one page each day, preferably at the same time, in the same place, with the same coffee. The first novel took three years; The Firm took two more, written back-to-back while he was still practicing law. His first draft of A Time to Kill was nearly 1,000 typed pages. The editor who bought it cut roughly one-third, and Grisham realized he had spent a year writing material that did not belong in the book. From then on, he decided to know the destination before beginning. He cites John Irving’s idea of not writing the first sentence until knowing the last, although Grisham says he at least needs to know the final scene. He outlines, organizes the story, and reduces its premise to a 30-second pitch before writing. Mel extends this beyond fiction: “one page a day” means making small, consistent progress, while a clear 30-second description of the next chapter of one’s life prevents aimless spinning.

Mel asks about the many jobs Grisham had before becoming famous. He says every job becomes material for life and writing. At 18, while commuting to college and feeling directionless, he worked at a Sears store selling underwear. When a customer tried to return what appeared to be used white briefs, Grisham refused to touch them and argued loudly enough that he thought he might be fired. He also laid asphalt, drove a bulldozer, dug ditches, and worked for a plumbing company. Those jobs taught him what he did not want to do permanently and made him appreciate the opportunity to attend college. He tells aspiring writers to experience different jobs, places, relationships, successes, failures, heartbreak, and other parts of life because varied experience supplies material. Grisham also describes receiving a D-minus in an English course—not a failure in the strictest sense, he says—after his instructor accused him of plagiarizing a term paper. He had earned an A-level average before the final, but the professor gave the paper an F, and Grisham became so upset that he cried in a restroom before returning to class. He left that college and transferred elsewhere. In retrospect, he connects the injustice of being falsely accused with his later fiction about people wrongfully accused and convicted. His first “golden moment” came in 1975 at Mississippi State. In a finance class, a Vietnam veteran challenged a conservative professor who argued that the United States should still be fighting in Vietnam. The veteran’s fearless argument impressed Grisham, who then asked what he should study. The man advised him to switch from general business to accounting and prepare for law school. Grisham followed the advice, stopped drifting, and found a direction.

Grisham’s second golden moment came when he was 30 and pursuing his original ambition: becoming a major courtroom trial lawyer. He spent much of his time at the local courthouse, volunteered for court-appointed criminal cases, and watched experienced attorneys. One day, he witnessed the testimony of a young girl who had been raped. The judge cleared the courtroom and posted deputies at the entrances so she could testify privately. Grisham remained because, as a lawyer and officer of the court, he was allowed to stay. The testimony lasted about an hour and moved through intense emotions. The girl was sometimes brave and sometimes visibly frail; the judge, attorneys, and all 12 jurors were visibly affected. The defendant, whom Grisham describes as a hardened criminal, showed no emotion. During a recess, Grisham left to retrieve his briefcase, then returned to the courtroom and found the defendant still sitting there. Grisham had the furious thought that if the victim had been his daughter and he had a gun, he would have killed the defendant, then challenged the jury to judge him for doing what they themselves might want to do. He says the reaction was raw, hateful, and real. That experience produced the idea for A Time to Kill: a courtroom novel told through the eyes of an idealistic young lawyer appointed to represent the accused man. Grisham had never written fiction, but he began with the first chapter and kept going. He sent sample chapters and a cover letter to agents and publishers, receiving rejection after rejection. He says rejection is normal even for successful writers, and the essential difference is that they continue.

After A Time to Kill was rejected repeatedly and eventually published without making Grisham financially secure, he continued writing The Firm while working as a lawyer and serving in the state legislature. His agent initially wanted changes to the manuscript, but Grisham refused, creating a stalemate. Around Christmas 1989, the agent told him nothing was happening and promised to sell the book in January. Unknown to both of them, a bootleg copy had reached Hollywood. A person posing as Grisham’s agent sent about 25 copies to studios and production companies, triggering interest and a bidding process. The agent eventually called Grisham on a Sunday morning and asked for permission to accept the highest offer from Paramount, Universal, or Disney Touchstone for the film rights. Grisham was confused: he thought they were discussing the book, not a movie. He authorized the sale, and the film rights to The Firm were sold to Paramount for $600,000—more than he had earned in ten years of practicing law. He and Renee were so surprised that they stopped on the way to lunch at his mother’s house to process the news. Mel emphasizes that the apparent lucky break came after five years of writing, learning, revising, handling rejection, and continuing to submit the work. Grisham agrees that timing was fortunate but says he had been honing the craft and learning from mistakes. After The Firm reached the New York Times list in 1991, he heard a young Walden Books executive say, “The big guys come out every year.” Grisham decided he wanted to become one of those major authors and hurried back to Oxford, Mississippi, to finish The Pelican Brief for publication the following year. His shorthand became “a page a day, a book a year.”

Grisham says he learned trial-lawyering by watching the best lawyers in court. As a third-year law student, he skipped classes to observe major civil trials and studied how experienced attorneys worked. He applies the same pattern to writing: he reads widely, including books he considers weak and books he considers far better than anything he could currently produce. The weaker books encourage him because they show that publication is possible; the stronger books give him something to aspire to. He also tells writers that publishing needs new talent every year, so they should read debut novels and keep developing their technical skills through vocabulary, grammar, and extensive reading. When Mel asks what to tell someone who looks at a bookstore wall and wonders who would read their work, Grisham says they cannot control what other writers produce, what publishers buy, or what stores sell. They can control their own writing and improve it. If they have a good story, they should write it and not quit. He qualifies that talent matters, but says people can still learn from and model those who are excellent. The conversation then turns to wrongful convictions. After seeing a New York Times obituary about a man who had come within five days of execution in Oklahoma, Grisham traveled there, met the family, and began investigating. The experience introduced him to the scale of wrongful convictions; he has continued writing about the issue, advocating criminal-justice reform, and working with nonprofits. He and Renee also support efforts involving childhood hunger and homelessness. To remain hopeful amid overwhelming problems, he returns to what he can control: helping one person or making one small improvement each day. Mel echoes the point, saying that caring enough to feel heartbroken is evidence that one still values justice and human dignity, and that small actions in families and communities can create positive change.