What being a lawyer taught John Grisham about writing novels

Summary

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ReThinking with Adam Grant

Episode: What being a lawyer taught John Grisham about writing novels
Date: October 14, 2025
Guest: John Grisham

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, organizational psychologist and host Adam Grant sits down with bestselling author John Grisham to explore how Grisham’s legal career shaped both his writing process and worldview. They discuss Grisham’s early days as a nervous young lawyer, the transition into writing bestselling legal thrillers, his disciplined creative routine, how he wrestles with doubt, and his profound change of heart on the death penalty. Grisham also shares insight into his approach to writing, his activism for the wrongfully convicted, and rethinking justice in America—all with candid stories, humor, and reflection.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. John Grisham’s First Trial and Early Legal Experience

[03:36] – [08:01]

• First Case Nerves: Grisham recounts the harrowing experience of his first murder trial, unprepared and just seven months out of law school.

  • Quote:
    “I had no business trying that case by myself seven months out of law school.” — John Grisham [03:53]
  • He describes being so nervous before his summation that the judge sent him out to vomit, but he returned, improvised his closing, and won a not-guilty verdict.
  • Quote:
    “I had this really strong urge just to go out the hallway and start running and keep running and not come back.” — John Grisham [05:47]

• Duty and Grit: The sense of duty to his client kept him in the courtroom.

  • “You can’t just leave the courtroom and leave your client. I had a duty to my client at that point.” — John Grisham [07:18]

• Early Career Dreams: The thrill of his first win kept him motivated to pursue the dream of being a big-time trial lawyer, despite many setbacks.

2. Transition from Law to Writing

[09:10] – [11:02]

• Grisham’s dream shifted when he began writing. Despite early publishing struggles, “the freedom or to dream of doing nothing but writing books… became all consuming.” — John Grisham [10:45]
• Lack of financial reward and fulfillment in his legal career further motivated the change.

3. The Discipline of Writing

[11:02] – [15:20], [23:30] – [27:40]

• Structured Routine: Writes every morning from 7 to 11, without distraction—no phones, Internet, or music.

  • “[There’s] a period of time each morning … when I’m all alone in my writing room, my little office at home on the farm, with nobody else around… And I sit down at 7, 7:30…” — John Grisham [11:28]

• Preparation and Outlining:

  • He won’t start a novel until thoroughly working through the story, characters, and plot twists in his mind for months.
  • Creating a comprehensive outline helps him avoid getting stuck and wasting time on false storylines.

• Revision Style — Basher, Not Swooper:

  • Inspired by Vonnegut’s distinction, Grisham identifies as a “basher,” revising as he goes and keeping draft quality high.
  • “My goal each day is to write a thousand words… When I’m done, I’ve written the last sentence. I don’t want to see it again until the next morning. And when I sit down the next morning, I go back and read what I wrote the day before and make a lot of edits.” — John Grisham [23:35]

• Early Lessons: On his first book, he overwrote and later cut a third of the manuscript.

  • “The manuscript for A Time to Kill was almost 1,000 pages long. So it got rejected…” — John Grisham [26:34]
  • Lesson: Learn to streamline and make the prose “leaner, faster.”

4. Creativity, Doubt, and the Writing Process

[18:01] – [22:27], [19:41], [23:07]

• Handling Doubt: Despite a record of consecutive bestsellers, Grisham admits, “My big fear in life is I'm going to write a book and my wife is not going to like it at all. And my agent and my publisher are going to really dislike the book… It has not happened yet.” — John Grisham [19:23]

• Healthy Self-Reflection: He encourages self-doubt and careful revision as healthy and necessary for both writers and lawyers.

  • “The self-doubt is always healthy. The self-reflection is very important in psychology.” — John Grisham [19:59]

• Balancing Structure and Surprise:

  • Downplays the romantic notion of purely organic creativity, advocating for structure but allowing for surprises as a story develops.
  • “You can’t plan everything. And you don’t want to, because the surprises are always fun.” — John Grisham [14:26]

• Belief in an Idea:

  • Grisham describes a gradual process—only stories that withstand weeks and months of scrutiny and still excite him make it to paper.

5. Approaching Endings & Dealing with Doubt Mid-Book

[18:01] – [19:41]

• He recounts how his latest book, The Widow, required rewriting the ending after feedback from his wife and agent.
  • “There are times with every book when you become very frightened by what you’re writing and you say, who wants to— this story doesn’t make any sense. … And you have to, you know, fight off the doubts and keep going.” — John Grisham [18:35]

6. Quick-Fire Round: Personal Insights

[29:49] – [31:17]

• Dinner Party Guests: Mark Twain, Jackie Robinson, Howard Cosell.
• Worst Writing Advice: Don’t write multiple stories at once—a focus on one at a time is best.
• Magic Tricks: Grisham praises Grant’s card tricks, adding a humorous break.
  • “The last card trick was pretty amazing. We scattered the deck all over the floor, ceiling and walls. And then you pulled out the one card from the thin air.” — John Grisham [30:58]

7. Rethinking the Death Penalty – Personal & Moral Transformation

[31:17] – [39:56]

• Changing His Mind:

  • “I became a very strong opponent of the death penalty.” — John Grisham [31:51]
  • He describes the crucial moment: a death row chaplain simply asked, “Do you think Jesus would approve of what we do here?” [32:29]

• Moral and Pragmatic Arguments:

  • Details the errors inherent in the U.S. death penalty system, citing Texas’ record of exonerations.
  • “We as human beings should have proven by now that we can’t be trusted to kill people on behalf of the state. Even if you support the death penalty, you cannot support the system of the death penalty. There are just too many mistakes.” — John Grisham [36:21]

• Role of Literature & Activism:

  • Says he doesn't deliberately write books to change minds, but hopes to raise awareness of issues like wrongful convictions and justice.
  • “Every wrongful conviction should be its own book, should have a book, because the stories are so compelling.” — John Grisham [35:39]
  • He’s active on the board of the Innocence Project and other exoneration projects.

• On the Slow Demise of the Death Penalty:

  • Grisham points to changing attitudes among jurors, not lawmakers, leading to fewer executions in the U.S.
  • “The death penalty is dying a slow death itself. There are fewer executions, fewer death verdicts, not because of courageous lawmakers or courageous judges, but because of courageous jurors.” — John Grisham [37:45]

• The Core Argument:

  • “We can all agree that killing is wrong. So why do we allow the state to kill? We are the state. We're part of the state. … It's still wrong.” — John Grisham [39:38]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The thrill of that win, the courtroom victory was so, so enormous for a rookie.” — John Grisham [08:08]
• “If you know where you're going, it's very hard to get lost.” — John Grisham [14:08]
• “The self-doubt is always healthy.” — John Grisham [19:59]
• “You want an ending that is satisfying but not predictable. And it's gotta be plausible, it's gotta be smart, but it can't be predictive.” — John Grisham [22:45]
• “[The death penalty] is dying a slow death itself… not because of courageous lawmakers or courageous judges, but because of courageous jurors.” — John Grisham [37:45]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• First court case & early legal lessons: [03:36] – [08:01]
• Transition from law to writing: [09:10] – [11:02]
• Daily writing routine & process: [11:13] – [15:20], [23:30] – [27:40]
• Coping with doubt and creative process: [18:01] – [22:27]
• Lightning round (dinner guests, writing advice): [29:49] – [31:17]
• Changing views on the death penalty: [31:17] – [39:56]

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Tone & Atmosphere

The episode balances humor (“My wife makes me take out a lot of [the jokes] because she doesn’t think I’m funny.” — John Grisham [02:10]), self-deprecation, and serious reflection. Grisham is candid and modest, and Adam Grant is curious, warm, and sharply insightful, creating a conversation that is both enlightening and accessible.

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For Listeners Seeking Takeaways

• Grisham’s legal background deeply informs his storytelling, structure, and sense of justice.
• Creative success relies on discipline, humility, and the willingness to rethink—whether in courts or on the page.
• Courageous self-reflection can lead to profound personal and political transformation.

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Transcript

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

TED Talks Daily is supported by Northwestern Mutual. Just like all of us, Northwestern Mutual financial professionals love a good talk. They're curious and they know that asking better questions leads to better conversations. And better conversations are how they get to know you, your life and your unique goals. They meet you where you are, help you find any financial blind spots you might have and uncover opportunities that others may miss. They'll work with you to build a personalized financial plan designed to help you reach your short and long term financial goals. And it's a better way to money. Learn [e-mail] the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company Milwaukee, Wisconsin banking with capital One.

[John Grisham]

Helps you keep more money in your.

[Adam Grant]

Wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One bank guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too. Ah, really? Thanks Capital One Bank Guy what's in your wallet? Term supply see capitalone.com bank capital1na member FDIC this episode is sponsored by Stripe. AI companies have unique business models, each with distinct billing needs. Stripe is the go to choice for AI leaders from early stage startups to scaled enterprises. With Stripe billing, you can support any business model and easily align your monetization strategy with customer value. Join the ranks of 78% of the Forbes AI 50 and millions of businesses worldwide that trust Stripe to help them build more profitable, scalable businesses. Discover [e-mail] I have to tell you, I've been reading you since the early 90s and I think you're more different than I expected than anyone I've ever met.

[John Grisham]

Is that good or bad?

[Adam Grant]

Well, I don't know. It depends what you make of how you're different. I had pictured you as really cerebral and serious and I was completely unprepared for how hilarious you are.

[John Grisham]

When I was a young lawyer, I realized quickly that in some very tense situations people really want to laugh. And I do it in my books and I always get in trouble. And these are serious suspense novels and mysteries and thrillers and invariably they make me take it out. My wife makes me take out a lot of it because she doesn't think I'm funny. But if it survives her and gets to New York, they make me take it out in New York. So I'm always looking for something funny.

[Adam Grant]

Well, I have some beef with your wife and your publisher then. 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 to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. John Grisham is the author of more than 50 number one best selling books including the Firm, the Pelican Brief and my favorite, the Runaway Jury. His first book, A Time to Kill, flopped when it debuted, but John kept writing and he's kept a strict writing routine ever since. His latest book is another legal thriller called the Widow. Like his first book, this one features a small town lawyer. John's days in the courtroom have been an inspiration for a lot of his work and led him to a dramatic change of heart around the death penalty. John, you started your career as a lawyer. What was your first trial like?

[John Grisham]

My first murder case, fresh out of law school, it wasn't capital murder, it was a self defense claim. It was a honky tonk shooting one night and everything blew, blew up and was out of control and there were more guns you could count and bullets flying everywhere. But my client had obviously killed another man and there's a lot of pressure and I had no business trying that case by myself seven months out of law school. But that's the way it worked in our small county in Mississippi. We had no public defender's office. So the cases were parceled out by the judges to all the young lawyers. And there I was in court and I was not prepared for the trial. I thought the trial would be postponed for another month or so. And the five or six cases ahead of my case suddenly went off on plea bargains. And the jury panel was there and the judge said, okay, you're up next, pick a jury and let's go. And I had no idea what to do. Made a lot of mistakes, every mistake a rookie could make. And the moment came for my final summation to the jury. The most dramatic moment in every trial when the lawyer thinks he can convince the jury or he can rescue a bad presentation or whatever, pull all the pieces together and do a magic trick and win the case. And I got up to address the jury and I had nothing to say. I had a legal pad because you always have to have legal pad. And there was nothing written on it. I had no notes. And I had this great judge, Andy Baker, and he was sort of my mentor and he said, Mr. Christian, will you approach the bench? And I walked over and he put his hand over the microphone and he looked at me and he said, you're in trouble, aren't you? I said, yes, I'm in trouble. He said, do you need to go vomit? And I said, I don't know, but I've got to do something. I've got to. He said, okay, I'm gonna hold everything right here. There's the door. Go out that door. Go downstairs. There's the restroom. Go take care of yourself and hurry back. And I did that, and I. I vomited. I was so upset and nervous. Just the butterflies were terrible. And I washed my face off. And I knew the jury was waiting, the courtroom was waiting, the judge was waiting, everybody was waiting. And I had this really strong urge just to go out the hallway and start running and keep running and not to come back. I really wanted to run and just say, forget this case. Forget this profession. I'm going to do something else with my life. And found the guts to go back in there and address the jury and found some words that came together and was able to make a presentation off the cuff. And. And the jury found my client not guilty. And it was a big moment, and I learned a lot about myself through that one terrible incident. Wow.

[Adam Grant]

Oh, I have so many questions. First of all, I'm getting this image of you being a very dutiful, obedient young lawyer where the judge tells you to go vomit. Yes, you, Honor. And then you just go and do it.

[John Grisham]

Yeah, well, I'll say it's not unusual. It's true. It happens all the time because the butterflies are horrendous. Your system is really keyed up, and there's a lot of nausea in those situations.

[Adam Grant]

So you said you wanted to run, but you didn't. Why not?

[John Grisham]

You can't just leave the courtroom and leave your client. I had a duty to my client at that point. My client was not speaking to me. After three days of watching my malpractice in the courtroom, he wanted no part of me. He was sitting at the far end of the table, as far away from me as he could get. So we weren't speaking. But, you know, ethically, I had a duty. It would have been just a really juicy piece of gossip around the courthouse if I had walked out or run out. I managed to pull things together and grit my teeth and go back in there.

[Adam Grant]

Wow. It's easy to imagine you make it through that. Okay, I'm done. I do not need this again. How did you stick it out another 10 years?

[John Grisham]

Well, I'll tell you. When the jury came back with a verdict of not guilty, and I was able to convince the jury that my client was acting in self defense, which he really was. The thrill of that win, the courtroom victory was so, so enormous for a rookie. And I was driving home from the courthouse and I was just laughing. I was so relieved to be away from the courtroom, but I just thought, this is pretty great after all. And I was dreaming of being a, a big time trial lawyer. That's what I wanted. And that's what eventually led to A Time to Kill because it was based on something I saw in a courtroom. And I, I was inspired to create this story involving a young lawyer, very autobiographical, like myself, in a small town in Mississippi trying the big case, you know, the, with the, winning the big courtroom verdict. And so the dream, you know, continued. It was other, other wins in the courtroom, other victories and a lot of defeats. But I kept aiming toward that goal of being a really accomplished courtroom lawyer. That was my dream.

[Adam Grant]

So what was it that killed the dream?

[John Grisham]

Writing books. Success as an author. About halfway through that 10 year career, and that's not a long period of time, but I got the urge to at least try to write. I thought it was going to be a mystery at first, a courtroom drama. And I started writing a few words every day, had the story, and I really believed in the story. I pecked away at it and before long the book was, you know, I had 300 pages stacked up and I realized I was going to finish it. And my first novel was published while I was still a lawyer and didn't sell. But I kept writing. I kept writing.

[Adam Grant]

John, one of the interesting things to me about your career transition is you obviously gained a lot of creative freedom, but in a very basic sense, it sounds like you lost some impact. You shift to writing novels and you're not saving innocent people from a life in prison or from the death penalty anymore. Did you struggle at all with a loss of meaning?

[John Grisham]

It was just not financially rewarding. As a small town lawyer, I just couldn't see myself doing that. And the cases I dreamed of getting, I didn't get. The big noted criminal cases or civil cases were not coming my way. And my dream was not going to happen the way I wanted it to. And Adam, when you get the urge to write full time, it's a very powerful dream, especially when you're locked into a job that consumes so much time and so much pressure and so much energy and is not that rewarding. I was kind of tired of that suddenly. To have the freedom or to dream of doing nothing but writing books, that was just a huge dream that became all consuming.

[Adam Grant]

You have an interesting way of Pursuing that dream, which is you impose constraints on your own freedom. I think you have one of the more religious writing routines of anyone I know. Would love to hear more about it.

[John Grisham]

Well, I did. I didn't start off 40 years ago with the dream or goal of writing 50 books. I think I'm up to 51 or 52 now. The way I think of it now, and I have for a long time, is I'm blessed with good health and also a lot of creative energy. There's a period of time each morning from 7 until about 11 when I'm all alone in my writing room, my little office at home on the farm, with nobody else around. No phones, no fax, no Internet, no music, no nothing. Same desk, same cup of coffees, same quilt, same everything. And I sit down at 7, 7:30, and I'm still very thankful I get to do that and create and write and create these stories that people enjoy. And I occasionally see stories involving the law, lawyers, law firms, courts, appeals cases, litigation. That's where I like to live. That's my world anyway. I can read a story about a fascinating wrongful conviction case or a murder case or some kind of criminal action, and you change a few facts, just change this fact and that fact or whatever and fictionalize it, and you've got what could be a very compelling mystery. And that's just the way I think all the time.

[Adam Grant]

I think one of the things that I struggle with as a writer is when I become that disciplined about my writing, I start to force bad ideas and I end up going down rabbit holes as opposed to saying I want to write in a way that's, you know, a little more free flowing, a little bit less linear, a little bit more imaginative and. And I seem to do that better when I have a little bit less structure. And I think maybe there's something I'm missing. So talk to me about how you maintain this routine and you know, the goal of writing a thousand or two thousand words without feeling like you box yourself in.

[John Grisham]

Writers are noted for having these brilliant ideas, these great ideas for novels, and you run off, you can't wait to start writing. And you hammer away and you write 50,000 words and all of a sudden you stop and you realize you don't know where you're going or you don't know where to, or you've got yourself written into a box, into a corner. Writers do that all the time. I'm not gonna do that. I'm too lazy to waste all that time. By the time I start a Novel. I've worked on the story for a long time. Very few stories come out of nowhere and hit and stick and become novels. There are a lot of stories and most of them go away. I work on them for a while. I let them sit for a while. And most of them, they're all brilliant when you first get the idea and the brilliance kind of fades away with almost all of them. The good ones, though, stick around and I'll continually add to it, work on the outline. What's a great opening? What's an unexpected finish? How do you maintain the narrative tension for 300, 400 pages? What's your main character look like? Just don't do a, you know, white boy every time. That's what I am. Let's try something different. Who's a secondary character? You know, all these things that are fun to dream up. And so by the time I start writing, I've got a pretty strong outline of the book written down. And I follow that. And again, I learned this with a time to kill. If you know where you're going, it's very hard to get lost. And having said that, in the course of writing a novel or any kind of book, you can't plan everything. And you don't want to, because the surprises are always fun. When a new character pops up or you think of a plot twist or a subplot twist that you hadn't anticipated and suddenly there it is. You can't plan everything. To me, it's still fun. The fun experience of writing a novel.

[Adam Grant]

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[Podcast Host / Announcer]

TED Talks Daily is supported by Northwestern Mutual. Just like all of us Northwestern Mutual financial professionals love a good talk. They'll take the time to ask better questions to get to know you and your unique goals. They'll help you find any financial blind spots you might have and uncover opportunities that others may miss. Then they'll partner with you to build a personalized financial plan designed to help you reach your short and long term financial goals. It's a better way to money. Learn [e-mail] the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

[Adam Grant]

As somebody who begins with the end in mind, I understand you were in for a little bit of a surprise as you were writing your latest book, the Widow.

[John Grisham]

Yeah, Got off track a little bit. I had an ending. This has happened once or twice in the span of, you know, all these books, but it happened in January of this year. I was not sure about the ending. I knew it was risky. And my wife, she's the first reader, she reads everything the first time through and she didn't like the ending. That's a big sign right there. And then my agent, who's also my editor, he didn't like the ending. There. There are times with every book when I think, I think this is healthy, where you become very frightened by what you're writing and you say, who wants to. This story doesn't make any sense. Who wants to read this? This is not plausible. Fiction can be anything you want it to be, but it's Gotta be plausible, it's gotta be believable. And you reach a point where you go, this. You know, I'm terrified by this story. I'm not sure it's gonna work. And you have to, you know, fight off the doubts and keep going. So anyway, to fix the problem, I just kept writing and I wrote another ending after the one I thought I had, and it worked. I mean, that's part. It's part of the process of doing, is being able to fix something. My big fear in life is I'm going to write a book and my wife is not going to like it at all. And my agent and my publisher are going to really dislike the book. By the time I've gone through the whole process and written 100,000 words, 500 pages, I turn it in and they say, this really sucks. Okay, that's my big fear. And it has not happened yet.

[Adam Grant]

It's fascinating to hear this, John. I mean, you've released more than 50 consecutive Number 1 New York Times bestsellers in a row, and you're still grappling with the fear and doubt along the way of what if this one sucks?

[John Grisham]

Sure. I think the fear and doubt should always be there with whatever you're doing. You talk about fear and doubt when you walk into a courtroom, even after years of practice, and you've got to select a jury and you've got to put the jury in the box and start calling witnesses. And you've got to be in command of the courtroom or in control of your case because the outcome could be. It will be crucial for one side. That's fear, that's doubt. That's what I grew up doing, and I learned it the hard way. So the self doubt is always healthy. The self reflection is very important in psychology.

[Adam Grant]

We often suggest that there's an optimal amount of doubt, that if you get too much, you feel paralyzed by it and it becomes debilitating. If you have too little, you might be overconfident or complacent, and there might be a sweet spot in the middle of that stress curve where you say, okay, I have enough doubt to stay open to different paths and, you know, sort of keep critiquing and improving my work, but not so much that I just feel like I can't do it, so I might as well give up. Do you buy that?

[John Grisham]

I've never had so much doubt that I gave up on something I was already working on. I have to believe in it before I start. And it takes a while to reach that point, to reach the Starting point. It takes a long time. I don't even in life, I don't have a lot of highs. I don't have a lot of lows. I just kind of stay on an even keel. That's just my nature. I just kind of stay in the middle of the road. I know writers who are just paralyzed by doubt and cannot finish. And I know writers who have written some really bad stuff because they thought it was brilliant and it didn't work. We all want to read good writers and I'll read a really good writer and invariably I'll say, I will never be that good. I just think that some things you can't do. And so I recognize my limitations. That's, again, that's part of the self reflection, self analysis. That is just kind of second nature.

[Adam Grant]

With that level of self awareness and humility. How do you get to the point where you really believe in an idea? You said it takes a long time. What happens along the way?

[John Grisham]

It's a gradual process. It's fairly easy to create a big hook early in the story. And when you write suspense or mysteries or thrillers, you better have the hook early on in the story. And then the ending is tricky because you don't want your reader to say, okay, I had this book figured out halfway through. You want an ending that is satisfying but not predictable. And it's gotta be plausible, it's gotta be smart, but it can't be predictive.

[Adam Grant]

Do you know the Vonnegut distinction between swoopers and bashers?

[John Grisham]

No.

[Adam Grant]

I've never liked the terms because they're not intuitive. But the way he described it, swoopers are writers who bang out a first draft and create without editing. And then they go back and refine. And bashers do the opposite. They try to perfect each sentence before moving on to the next one. Which one is your style?

[John Grisham]

The latter. I've never hammered out a first draft. I can't do that. My goal each day is to write a thousand words. And sometimes that may take two hours or five hours. Sometimes it may be 2,000. If I get into a situation where there's a lot of dialogue that goes pretty fast for me. The pages can fly by. So anyway, whatever I write that day, at least a thousand, sometimes more. When I'm done, I'm done. When I'm done, I've written the last sentence. I don't want to see it again until the next morning. And when I sit down the next morning, I go back and read what I wrote the day before and make a Lot of edits. Clean it up and reading it again. We're talking about suspense here. Reading it gets me back into the rhythm of the story. Maybe I see a mistake I made the day before. Whatever. Now in between that, the 24 hours in between or 20 hours in between, I get lost in the story. I think about it a lot. I think about the next scene. What am I going to start writing in the morning? What's the scene going to be? I'm not obsessed with it. It's not work. I'm just thinking about it. It's just fun to. When I'm in the car and I don't drive a lot every day I never listen to music or anything. It's total silence. So I can think about what the next scene is and what's the dialogue going to be. And I'll replay dialogue from that morning if it doesn't sound right to make sure it sounds right. So there's the constant revision. And so when I finish a book, it's pretty clean. I've corrected a lot of the mistakes. I see it still needs a good edit and I still listen to my editor. But I've never been able to just plow through a rough draft real fast. I just can't do it.

[Adam Grant]

Well, you're making me rethink part of my writing process here, listening to you, because I've been more in that first swooper camp historically saying, yeah, I know that creating and critiquing are different mental modes and if I start to criticize too soon, I can get paralyzed. I can see everything that's wrong with what I'm creating and I go too slow and I second guess myself and I don't want to get stuck. That's where writer's block happens. And so I'm just going to be in drafting mode. It's all idea generation. And then I'll come back later and put on my critic hat and try to make it better. And what I'm realizing as you talk is although there are benefits of that approach, there's also a cost, which is I am more likely then to end up in a rabbit hole. I may then spend weeks working through something that ultimately is not a compelling direction. And if I had revised along the way, I probably would have caught it sooner and not had to throw away thousands of words of garbage that didn't need to be produced in the first place. So I'm now wondering if I need a middle ground approach.

[John Grisham]

I can't answer that. I've told you what I do and everybody works differently. I'll say this with my first novel, I worked on it for three years. I had no idea what I was doing. I'd never written before. And the manuscript for A Time to kill was almost 1,000 pages long. So it got rejected. Talked about that when I finally found a publisher and an editor, a really good editor, we cut one third of the book from about a thousand to about 600 pages. And that 1/3, the way I looked at things was one year of my life because I'd worked on it for three years. Wow. And listen, I was getting up at 5 in the morning to be in the office by 5:30 to write for two hours, sometimes three, before the day started, before the phone started ringing. So I was losing a lot of sleep. And I said to myself, I'm not doing that again. I'm not going to waste another year of my life by writing too much. I learned how to do that over the years. Just, you know, write. And then look for ways to streamline it, make it leaner, make it faster.

[Sherrell Dorsey]

Hi, this is Sherrell Dorsey from the TED Tech podcast and today I want to talk to you about Boost Mobile. So you're thinking about upgrading to the Amazing new iPhone 17 Pro, the most powerful iPhone yet with 8 times optical zoom. But are you also thinking about the traffic on your way to the store or transferring all your data? Well, good news. When you order a new phone online with Boost Mobile, they'll send an expert to your home or work to deliver your brand new iPhone 17 Pro and get you all set up on Boost Mobile within minutes. No hassle. Visit boostmobile.com to get started. Delivery available for select devices [e-mail] terms apply. This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat concierge. And it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. And it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value, advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

[John Grisham]

This Halloween.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

What's under your costume might just steal the show.

[Adam Grant]

Wait, is that Glow in the Dark underwear?

[John Grisham]

Booyah.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

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[John Grisham]

Glow in the dark undies and PJs. So comfy.

[Adam Grant]

It's scary tricks, treats and buttery soft briefs.

[John Grisham]

Exactly. To get cozy and Spooky for less. Go to MeUndies.com Trickortreat and enter code.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

Trickortreat to get 20% off your first order. That's 20% off your first order at MeUndies.com TrickortREAT code trick.

[Capital One / Nordstrom Advertiser]

Trick or treat me undies.

[John Grisham]

Treat yourself.

[Adam Grant]

Are you ready for a lightning round?

[John Grisham]

I guess. I guess.

[Adam Grant]

First question is, who are your dream dinner party guests? Alive or dead?

[John Grisham]

Oh, Mark Twain. I loved Mark Twain since I was 12 years old. Who else? Jackie Robinson. I love baseball. Howard Cosell, the famous announcer. Didn't really like him, but I always wanted to argue with him. That's a good dinner party.

[Adam Grant]

I'd be happy to join that one. What's the worst writing advice you see given regularly?

[John Grisham]

I've heard people say try to write two or three stories at the same time. And I think that's bad advice. I can't do that. Never been able to do that one at a time.

[Adam Grant]

What's the question you have for me as a psychologist?

[John Grisham]

It was in April and we were in Tuscany and we all gathered in a den by the fire and you pulled out a deck of cards and did three or four tricks that were truly phenomenal. Where'd you learn those card tricks?

[Adam Grant]

Well, thank you. I guess. I was mostly self taught. I had some books and some videos, but started when I was 12, babysitting for some kids down the street and needed a way to entertain them.

[John Grisham]

The last card trick was pretty amazing. We scattered the deck all over the floor, ceiling and walls. And then you pulled out the one card from the thin air.

[Adam Grant]

Oh, thank you. I'm gonna play this part for my wife. Cause we have an ongoing debate about magicians. Okay. What is something you've changed your mind about or rethought?

[John Grisham]

Well, it's funny you mentioned that. This time yesterday I was on death row in Texas talking to a guy named Robert Roberson who is scheduled to be executed. And I spent a lot of time thinking about the death penalty because I grew up not in Texas, but in the very conservative Southern Baptist part of the country. The death belt, as we say, also known as the Bible Belt, where the death penalty is still very popular. And I grew up that way. And I had a dramatic change of heart 30 years ago when I was writing a novel. And it was a big change in my life because it runs contrary to what I was taught as a child and what most of my friends believe now. But I became a very strong opponent of the death penalty. Wow.

[Adam Grant]

I'd love to hear a Little more about how you changed your mind on the death penalty. What was it that shifted your opinion?

[John Grisham]

Oh, it was a conversation with a chaplain on death row in Mississippi in 1994. I was on death row researching a book that would become the Chamber. I'd been there several times, and I already knew the guards and some of the inmates, and I lived two hours away, and I knew the executioner. And my last visit there, we were next to the death room where the gas chamber was. There was no execution. Nobody was there but me and the chaplain. And we were sitting in this cold, damp holding room where they keep the inmate for the last one hour before he goes through the door and he's executed. And the chaplain was a retired minister, and he. He was a chaplain of death row. And he said, can I ask you a question? I said, sure, anything. He said, are you a Christian? I said, I am. He said, do you think Jesus would approve of what we do here? And there was no way to say yes. Jesus taught forgiveness and redemption, not revenge and retribution. And he said, you're right. This is wrong. And I thought, well, that was the 180 degree flip right there. And I drove away from Parchment with a. From the prison with a whole different attitude, a whole different belief.

[Capital One / Nordstrom Advertiser]

Wow.

[Adam Grant]

Just one question completely changed your entire philosophy.

[John Grisham]

Yep.

[Adam Grant]

Well, it tracks with the psychology of motivational interviewing, which suggests that if instead he had said to you, you know, John, here's why your belief is wrong, that attempt to shame you might have made you defensive.

[John Grisham]

Right.

[Adam Grant]

And instead, he invited you to answer the question for yourself.

[John Grisham]

It worked.

[Adam Grant]

Wow, that's really powerful since you rethought your stance on the death penalty, you know, starting with A Time to Kill. But in multiple books, using the tools of suspense and mystery and thriller, you've gotten a lot of readers to change their minds and, you know, wonder why. Why does anyone think that the state has the right to decide who lives and who dies? Or that a jury should make that call? You serve on the board of directors of the Innocence Project, as well as another organization that's about exonerating the wrongfully convicted. I wonder if that provides some of the meaning that I thought might be absent from your legal career. You know, both as a writer and as an activist, you're changing policy, you're changing opinion, and you're rescuing innocent people who might lose their lives.

[John Grisham]

I don't start out writing a book hoping to change opinions. Some books, the more serious books, hope to raise awareness about a certain issue, whether it's related to criminal justice or environmental destruction or insurance fraud or whatever. But no, the innocence work was something else I stumbled into by accident because I already published probably 20 books by the time I got the inspiration to write a nonfiction book, something I never thought about doing, based on a wrongful conviction case. And it involved a guy in Oklahoma who was almost executed for a murder committed by a man well known to the police and should have been the first suspect. And I was just inspired by the story. And once I jumped into the middle of it and started researching it, I realized how many innocent people are in prison. I've written two nonfiction books about wrongful convictions, one novel about a wrongful conviction. There will be others, I'm sure. And I've said many times, every wrongful conviction should be its own book, should have a book, because the stories are so compelling.

[Adam Grant]

So you've got a. You've got a moral perspective on why the death penalty is wrong. It also sounds like you have a very pragmatic concern, which is there are just too many flaws and holes in our legal system to take the risk of executing an innocent person.

[John Grisham]

I just left death row in Texas, the most prolific state, and a state that's. Most of the people are quite proud of their death chamber. In that state, they have sent 18 people to death row, convicted by juries, unanimously. 18 people who have later been exonerated because they weren't guilty. That's a lot of mistakes. That's a lot of mistakes. And I believe we can't prove it because there's no clear proof, but there's some very strong circumstantial evidence that they have executed several who were innocent, not just in Texas, but around the country. And we as human beings should have proven by now that we can't be trusted to kill people on behalf of the state. Even if you support the death penalty, you cannot support the system of the death penalty. There are just too many mistakes.

[Adam Grant]

I mean, for me, it's hard to understand why we're still doing this. You know, I look at well over 100 countries have abolished the death penalty altogether. Almost all of Europe, some of the countries that still have it, I think most people would consider to be, in other ways, violators of human rights. Why is this such a slow, uphill battle in the US and what do you think it's going to take to change it?

[John Grisham]

The death penalty is dying a slow death itself. There are fewer executions, fewer death verdicts, not because of courageous lawmakers or courageous judges, but because of courageous jurors. Defense lawyers are better and jurors are now allowed to see more of the defendant's life and past. And so most of these people are guilty? Most of them are. The crimes are atrocious, horrendous beyond description. Many of them are. And there's always the urge to get immediate revenge. But when you learn more about the defendant and the fact that he never had a chance in life, never had a family, never had whatever the things that most of us have, he fell through the cracks time and time again through the systems. Juries have more sympathy these days and they are saying more and more often, let's don't kill him. Let's just keep him in prison where he belongs. And that's what's happening. So you're seeing fewer executions. The number of executions has really decreased. Now that could turn around, given the current mood in our country, with the full throated support of the death penalty by our president, who wants to execute a lot of people, and that will filter down to his supporters and throughout society. We don't know what that's going to do to the death penalty, but it can't be good.

[Adam Grant]

From all the years you've spent working on this, what has been the most effective argument for you?

[John Grisham]

It's very simple. We can all agree that killing is wrong. So why do we allow the state to kill? We are the state. We're part of the state. And we. We tolerate it. We allow it. It's still wrong.

[Adam Grant]

Hard to argue with that.

[John Grisham]

I've got to run our. Our hour's up.

[Adam Grant]

We're at time. Thank you, John.

[John Grisham]

Thank you, Adam. See you down the road.

[Adam Grant]

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grann. The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glaser. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winick and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hylash, Ban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale, sue and Alison Layton Brown. Do you have a hot take or unpopular opinion that you're keen to defend?

[John Grisham]

Oh, no, all my opinions are popular. All smart people agree with me. I can't think of anything.

[Sherrell Dorsey]

This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API. Checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology.

[Capital One / Nordstrom Advertiser]

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[John Grisham]

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[Adam Grant]

Helps businesses like yours to operate smoothly, stay protected and keep growing every day. Speed up and stay ahead.

[John Grisham]

Visit [e-mail] Enterprise.