John Grisham

 

Born on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker, John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Realizing he didn't have the right stuff for a pro career, he shifted gears and majored in accounting at Mississippi State University. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. In 1983, he was elected to the state House of Representatives and served until 1990. Grisham spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987. Initially rejected by many publishers, it was eventually bought by Wynwood press, who gave it a modest 5,000 copy printing and published it in June 1988. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on another novel, the story of a hotshot young attorney lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared. When he sold the film rights to The Firm to Paramount Pictures for $600,000, Grisham suddenly became a hot property among publishers, and book rights were bought by Doubleday. Spending 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, The Firm became the bestselling novel of 1991. The successes of The Pelican Brief, which hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and The Client, which debuted at number one, confirmed Grisham's reputation as the master of the legal thriller.

Since first publishing A Time to Kill in 1988, Grisham has written one novel a year (his other books are The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, The Partner, and The Street Lawyer), and all of them have become bestsellers, leading Publishers Weekly to declare him "the bestselling novelist of the 90s" in a January 1998 profile. There are currently over 60 million John Grisham books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 29 languages. Six of his novels have been turned into films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, and The Chamber), as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man. When he's not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes, including taking mission trips with his church group. He also keeps up with his greatest passion: baseball. The man who dreamed of being a professional baseball player now serves as the local Little League commissioner. The six ballfields he built on his property have played host to over 350 kids on 26 Little League teams. Grisham lives with his wife Renee and their two children Ty and Shea. The family splits their time between their Victorian home on a farm in Mississippi and a plantation near Charlottesville, VA.

 

 


PageOneLit.com: How have your writing habits changed over the years? Do you do anything differently now as opposed to when you were writing A Time to Kill or The Firm?

John Grisham:  Not really. The books are written from August to November, from 6 a.m. to noon, five days a week. Old habits die hard.

PageOneLit.com: Do you think your work has changed over the years?

John Grisham: Not intentionally, and not to my knowledge. Read The Firm, then read The Broker, and see for yourself. There has been no deliberate effort to change writing style. I have tried over the years to become more efficient with words and produce 400 page manuscripts, as opposed to 500. Also because I have become lazier.

PageOneLit.com: What are your goals for future books?

John Grisham: My goal each time out is to write my best book ever. It’s that simple.

PageOneLit.com:  Do you have any writing superstitions? Do you have any special habits, good luck charms, or talismans that you use?

John Grisham: Not really. I write at the same place, same table, same chair, with the same cup and type of coffee. The same computer has produced the last fifteen books, and it’s about to give out. I’m not the superstitious type.

PageOneLit.com: How do you think the publishing industry as a whole has changed since the late eighties, early nineties when you were first established? Do you think it has changed for the better or for the worse?

John Grisham:  Obviously, there are fewer small publishers, more larger ones, much more consolidation. Truthfully, I don’t spend a lot of time studying the publishing industry. That may sound odd, but I concern myself with what I am writing. I rely on Doubleday to take care of the rest.

PageOneLit.com: What are you reading these days? What is the last book (fiction or nonfiction) that really excited and enthralled you?

John Grisham:   I’m reading a biography of Willie Morris. The last good book I read was The March by E.L. Doctorow.

PageOneLit.com: Aspiring authors are always told the importance of getting the “right” agent. What advice would you give them about selecting the right agent?

John Grisham: Take a long look at the other authors represented by the same firm.

PageOneLit.com:  If you were starting out today, how would you go about finding an agent or publisher?

John Grisham:  I’d do it the same way I did it 16 years ago. I researched the agents, made a list of about 20 I thought looked promising, and did multiple submissions to them. If your writing is good, an agent will see it, sooner or later. There are many agents in New York, and they are all looking for authors.

PageOneLit.com: Some thriller or mystery writers focus almost exclusively on plot while others try to create a specific atmosphere and still others develop character and so forth. What is your main focus when telling a story?

John Grisham:  Plot.

PageOneLit.com: What is your single-best, most-important, can’t-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors?

John Grisham: Write at least one page every day, without fail. If you’re trying to write a book, and you’re not writing at least one page a day, then the book is not going to get written.