John Grisham wrote two books while working every day as a Mississippi lawyer. Soon, he became one of the best-selling authors of all time.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00You can find an hour a day.
00:02For me, it was waking up earlier in the morning,
00:05very early in the morning, and going to my office earlier
00:10to write a page or two every day.
00:12And I was disciplined enough to do it,
00:16and that's how the first two books were written.
00:19I had never written anything before,
00:30did not know how to write,
00:32had never studied writing,
00:34did not dream of being a writer when I was a student,
00:38but I had what I thought was a great idea
00:41for a courtroom drama, a big trial,
00:46set in a small town in Mississippi.
00:49I knew what I was writing about because I was living that life.
00:53And so I began to write in my spare time.
00:57I would write a page here, a page there,
01:00you know, whatever I could.
01:03And it took three years to write the first book,
01:08and I finished it.
01:09And I was very proud because I had finished a book.
01:12I didn't know what to do with it.
01:14It was rejected by everyone,
01:16so it was very depressing to have this book
01:19that I had labored over for a long time to be rejected.
01:24And I told my wife that, you know,
01:29I said, I'm going to write one more book, try to,
01:33and if the second book doesn't work, if it flops too,
01:38then forget this hobby, forget writing.
01:42I'll just, I'll be a lawyer. I'm still a lawyer.
01:45Well, about two years later,
01:46when I finished writing the second book,
01:48it was The Firm, and when The Firm came out in 1991,
01:53it became a very popular book.
02:06I remember one day I was, in 1991,
02:08I was, I guess, 36 years old,
02:11and The Firm was on the bestseller list in New York,
02:14and it was doing very well, selling very well,
02:17and I realized that I didn't have to be a lawyer anymore.
02:21Nobody says, okay, I'm tired of being a schoolteacher
02:27or a lawyer or an architect.
02:29I'm tired of that. I'm going to write books.
02:31It doesn't happen that way. You'll starve.
02:33You've got to do it at the same time.
02:35You've got to start,
02:36you have to treat the writing as a very serious hobby.
02:41People do this all the time.
02:42They talk about the book they're going to write,
02:45and they kind of talk it, talk it, talk it,
02:47and they never write it.
02:48I tell people, don't talk about what you're writing.
02:52Just get it written,
02:54and then when the book gets published,
02:57then you have something to talk about.