John Grisham’s Advice to Aspiring Writers
November 16, 2009
Recently bestselling author John Grisham came through Tupelo to talk about his brand-new collection of short stories called Ford County. While here, he gave a brief interview offering advice for aspiring writers. Among other things, he says you shouldn’t be worried about getting published. Write the book first and worry about getting published later. You can write without getting published, but you can’t get published without writing.
And then he offered this wise advice about the nitty-gritty of writing. This speaks to everyone who has to write anything–a book, a paper, a report, a column, a sermon, or even a blog entry.
The best advice I’d give to anybody: Unless you’re writing one page a day, nothing’s going to happen. You’ve got to make yourself write at least one page a day, and at the end of the year you’re going to have a whole lot of pages.
You can think about it forever. You can start and stop, and have all this angst about your writing and blah, blah, blah. Until you’re writing a page a day, nothing will happen.