 Greetings, everyone. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Our guest tonight is responsible for me reading Elmer Kelton. He's also responsible for me reading Ed McBain. And while I was at it, Steve and Crane and George Orwell and Tom Wolf and a lot of other people. And the reason is that until 10 or 15 years ago, I had a long period where I read nothing but nonfiction books. And I'd be lying there reading something of great substantive importance. And my wife is breathlessly inhaling some book two feet away. And she kept thrusting along with me. You've got to read, you've got to read, you've got to read this guy, Coban. And finally, one day I did. And then I read everything else he'd ever written. And ever since that time, I now am always reading fiction along with the nonfiction. So I owe him my reintroduction to fiction. And I'll bet there are people in the room who have been just as captivated as I have. He is bar none. No question, America's most successful. I don't know if beloved's the term, but certainly closely followed fiction writer and certainly mystery writers, when every award there are, one named after Edgar Allen Poe and others named after Seamus, whoever that was. And every other award available. More to the point, his last six books all debuted at number one on the New York Times list. Each has been a million seller. He's one of the most inventive, creative, and constantly delightful writers on the American scene today. I'm sure there are many, many fans in this room who will join me in welcoming our friend, Harlan Coban. One thing quickly, you're like the smart one in the family. Yeah, that's right. Not the only one who can say that. That's right. We'll get to that later. So the format will be, as has often been the case, I'll ask the first few questions, which is to allow you time to think through your own and summon your own courage. And we have microphones, I think, that'll be available. So starting in just a couple minutes, I hope the bolder among you will come forward and line up and we'll get to your questions as soon as we can. But just to get us started, let me ask what America really wants to know most. And that is, tell us about your basketball career and how you gave up a sure ticket to NBA stardom to be a writer. Well, I often say, when I created Myron Bolotar, he was with Whistful Filment, where he's smarter, he's funnier, he's faster. I do him a bit in tourism, a better dancer, I'll demonstrate later. And I'm slightly wiser in the ways of women. We're not talking about two geniuses here. We're talking about, he's saying syphilis is better than gonorrhea, we're just talking about two guys. But he's a better basketball player than you, but I do, I don't want to brag, but I wasn't all-American, a basketball player. When I leave off of that sentences, I wasn't picked all-American by Sports Illustrated or something like that, but I was picked all-American by the, the Indianapolis Jewish Post in opinion. Yeah. I am a Jewish all-American basketball player, somehow through painstaking research to crack squad at the Indianapolis Jewish Post in opinion, found five Jews who played college basketball that year. And I think it was me, Heshi Moishin, two guys from Meshiva, with the team. And that's my basketball career. Well, so the literary world's gain was sports world's loss. Was there ever a struggling artist period for you, Harlan? Was there ever a time when it wasn't clear that you were going to have this kind of success? And if there was, what was playing me? Well, yeah, I think it's one of the things that in today's market, people sort of expect to best-seller them right away. My first New York Times best-seller was Tell No One, which was my 10th book. My first book, I got very little money, and I wrote a series of books called Myron Bolotar, and my first Myron Bolotar book was a paperback original, and I got an advance of $5,000 for it. And I don't want to brag, I hate to brag, but three books later, the fourth Myron Bolotar book, I was up to $6,000 overnight. So, you know, and I get these emails from people who now are trying to do their self-publish or do it on Amazon, or like, you know, I've written three books, I have a Twitter account, how come I'm not selling like you and John Grisham? You know, it doesn't. So, I love those years, though. I mean, I have a great appreciation for those years. And like, you know, anything else, anybody who's had success in anything, if you don't really work for it, it doesn't feel quite as good, does it? You weren't doing anything else on the side, you know, Geoffie Lube, or Tim Tenenbaugh or something? I had a real job for eight years I worked in the travel industry, where I set up trips overseas. I'm not because I'm a brilliant linguist, but because my grandfather owned the travel agency. But what I actually learned from working was that I'm not really good at it. I mean, there's three things I make a writer, I say. Two are obvious, the third is really with key, it's not so obvious, the first is inspiration. You have to be inspired to do it. Well, duh, let's move that aside. The second is perspiration to write. If you want to be a writer, you have to do the actual work. And that means writing, okay? Creating characters is not writing, outlining is not writing, doing research is not writing, hanging with your friends at Starbucks is not writing. None of that is writing. Only writing is writing. Only the moments you sit your button chair and produce words, counts as writing, everything else is flotsam and jetsam. But the third, I think, and most important thing that you need to be a writer is desperation. And that is, I'm not fit to do anything else. Like, hold the real job. I was on a panel with a bunch of crime writers and they asked us as they do, what would you be if you weren't a writer? And one of my friends said a US senator, I'm like, oh please, I'd be a duvet cover. This is it. This is all I got, you know? So I'm disorganized, I'm forgetful. You know, I mean, look how I dressed today. It's nothing, nothing works for me. So this is what I can do. So I told Harlan in advance that I knew there must be a lot of questions that he was absolutely weary of answering and I would be happy to omit those. He said, no, go with anything. So here they come. Go ahead, man. So I think people would like to hear about, what is your MO? How do you work at this? I mean, what's the routine? And a question, as part of that, of these unbelievably tangled and inventive plots, do you map them all out to the end before you start or as occasionally I'll read somebody who claims that they sort of let the plot take them along? Which are you? Well, on that note, that's a big question. So let me try to, the first part is the idea. I'd say it takes nine months to write a book. It's like childbirth. The best part's the idea. That guy didn't get it. Can someone explain it to him? So let me start with how I come up with ideas and it's not a pretty process but I'm gonna really try to let you inside the brain. Normally it's from something in my real life and I constantly ask what if. So a few years ago, for example, I wrote a book called Promise Me. And the way that came to me is I overheard a couple of teenagers who I knew and loved. They were talking about drinking and driving. I overheard them. So I pulled them aside. Maybe some of you done something similar and I said promise me you won't do that. Here's my cell phone. I don't care if it's three in the morning. I don't care what you're doing or I'll drive you. I won't ask any questions. Won't tell your parents. Promise me you won't get this. Carla's someone's been drinking and driving. Now in real life that's it. Nothing else ever happened. The fiction writing's asking what if. Well what if a teenage girl calls my hero at 3 a.m. She's in New York City. He goes, he picks her up. He drops her off of what he thinks is a friend's house. The next day she's gone. No one knows where she is. What if. So those are the ways. That's one example of how I kind of come up with some time of story. One time I was going to the days when we used to go to like moto photo or photo shops to pick up your photos and I'm picking up this roll of film and as I'm going through it for a second, just a split second I thought there was a picture and I didn't take. Turns out the picture was just upside down but go with me on this. And I said what if there was a picture in this roll I didn't take. What if that picture changed my life? And I start asking what if, what if and I go through it like that until I start having the remnants of an idea. The problem with this is it sounds, it sounds like it takes about 15 minutes to come with it. This is three months of work ladies and gentlemen. This is three months of sitting on the couch going, no honey I can't throw at the garbage. I'm working, can't you see I'm working here. Hardest part of my job convincing my wife I have one. So that's the first part, the idea. Then I know the beginning when I start and I know the end. And I compare it to driving from my hometown in New Jersey to LA. I may go route 80, chances are I'll go via the Suez Canal and stop in Tokyo. But I pretty much end up in LA. One of my favorite quotes on writing comes from EL Doctoro who said that writing is like driving at night in the fog with just your headlights on. You can only stay a little bit ahead of you but you can make the whole journey that way. So I know a couple of spots maybe along the way I can see a couple but the rest of it in my case just happens. But if he asked writers their opinion, if he has 10 writers how he does it you get 11 different answers. So every writer does it differently, some books I don't do it this way but that's mostly my MO on that stuff. Somebody said I've quoted many times, writing's not hard, I just sit down and write what occurs to me. It's the occurring that's hard. And you know whether it's a speech or some piece I'm trying to write it's always like that. Why don't you get that far? I guess it. The first word is the hardest word. I mean the blank page is intimidating. That's why I don't normally write at home because I'll use any excuse not to write. So if I'm home I'm like yeah I'll write but first let's put aluminum siding on the house. Anything. 40 go. Right to avoid that moment. I go anywhere. Some people have a ritual where they have to write in a certain spot. My ritual is to write any place. I mean I've written in Starbucks, I've written in coffee shops. I almost wrote today in the chocolate bar. The Harry's chocolate. I went there for chocolate. No one told me, all right? Leave me alone. I was like oh I'm gonna have a quick little piece of chocolate. I'm gonna get three and that's the claim he made. I just had a sweet tooth I didn't know. But then he wrote me back at 5.30 was still there. So I think. I was looking for chocolate. It was hard to find. I kept thinking the bottom of one of those glasses will have chocolate. But the key to writing is to just write. So I'll use up a place like riding a horse. I'll use that place until it stops working and the horse dies. And then I'll find another horse and ride it. And whatever's making me write I will do. Somebody, it might have been you. Put a label on your presentation. Rules of writing and which ones, how to break them. So give us one rule or something people think is a rule that you don't buy and would break. Well first to write what you know. I mean, I write about murder and mayhem and kinky sex, well kinky sex. They're right, I'm just kidding. I don't know about any of it. Really a writer has to use his imagination. I'm also not a believer. You'll often hear do a lot of research when you write. I'm one of the few writers. If you're out there and you're interested in writing I recommend you don't do research for two reasons. One, research is more fun than writing. So it's like, oh, I'm gonna place this scene on Park Avenue in New York. Ah, but I got a flat in New York. I got a look. Now you guys see the girls walking. I got to smell the hot dogs. No, no, you have no imagination. You've been there maybe before you use it. And then you can go back later and do the research. The second reason is have you ever read one of those books where the guy does a ton of research and so he slows down the plot with a lot of cute factoids that he learned? Not a problem with me because I don't know anything. So there's a couple of rules. Really, whatever, and again, like I say, some people will you have to sit at one desk and write instead of certain hours? No, for me it's whatever will make me write. It doesn't matter how tired I am, how strong out feeling I am. Some days you're happy, some days you're sad, but when I see the books now, wow, there's a lot of books. It's my 27th book in 27 years. So I started when I was six. Yeah. Thanks. Now I never have and I know I never will come close to figuring out where LA is, where your books are going. Thanks. But I live with somebody who claims that she's figured out some of them. No. Okay, so I don't think so either. But here's my question is if by chance somebody did, is that a defeat or is that you just feel good for them? If I have the next book and they have a good time, I read reading it. That's it. Normally what I find is someone will say to me, oh, I guess that ending. I go, oh, you guess this part? Oh, well, not that part. You know, I got that part. So I like to have four or five twists at the end. So this is something for everybody a little bit. You know, I fool most people most of the time, but you can fool everybody all the time. But if you have to enjoy the whole journey, I want you to enjoy from page one to the end. I write, Elmore Leonard had my favorite quote on writing, which is, and think about this when you're writing, his advice on writing, which if you learn nothing else today, like you're learning something, but Elmore Leonard said, think about this, I try to cut out all the parts you'd normally skip, which is genius, just sheer genius. And I do that. I want on every page, every paragraph, every sentence, every word I ask, is this compelling? Is this gripping? Is this moving the story forward? Am I genuinely moving you? Because it's one thing to stir the pulse with a fast-moving plot, but if I don't stir your heart and I stir your mind, you're not coming back for another and I'm not having fun writing it, so. Yeah, well, you don't have to worry about me ever figuring it out. I don't even try. I don't want to know, I love when I want to be surprised. And some people enjoy figuring it out. Thinking they figured it out. Now, so this, I could be in a dead end here, but let me just venture an hypothesis. One thing when I look over the, I haven't read all 27, but a lot of them. But to me, there's a couple of patterns. Bad guys lose, they get what they deserve. There aren't these dark, black endings that, you know. There's an affection for small towns, suburbs, you know, the kind that a lot of literary figures love to dump on. And your characters love their families. Sometimes it gets them into trouble or tragedy or something, but, you know, parents really love their children and parents and children, imagine this, love their parents. And are you like a midwesterner in disguise? I mean, am I misreading you or this? Well, first of all, don't read the new book then. I don't want to crush your spears, because every time I'm accused of being something, I almost intentionally write something that's the opposite. So this new book is a pretty dark ending and I really piss all over suburbia. But I'm normally, normally you're right. When I actually first created Myron Bolotar to not get too corny on you, but I gave, Myron and I were fairly similar as I mentioned, but I gave him something I always wanted and he has something I always wanted and I have something he always wanted. Myron's dream in life is to get married, move to the burbs and have kids, so I can't give him that. On the other hand, my parents died fairly young and Myron has this wonderful, warm, loving relationship with his parents that I have a tendency to overwrite and get sentimental on. Tough, cut him if you don't like him, it's cheaper than therapy. But part of that was also, I have not seen that really done in fiction. It's always like the father was abusive and the mother put out her cigarettes on the guy. So I thought it would be interesting to sort of represent more of what I know, which is a loving relationship. And also when you're trying to write about what people want, if I were to ask everybody here, would you kill somebody? The answer is no, maybe not this guy. But if I asked you, would you kill someone who's trying to kill your kid or to save your child's life? Now the answer is yes. So where is that line? There's one, there's one. Where in the middle, if I bring it closer and closer on both sides, that's where I want to be. We all get that emotion. It's a universal emotion. And it's easy to be cynical, but it's more fun to be realistic. So just to remind, I'd like to see somebody advancing on the mics here soon because I'm sure there are better questions in the audience than I'm going to have. So I'll just do one or two more while you get your courage up. 27, I guess you said. Yep. Get easier as you go or harder. Which took longer, the first one or the next one? I think probably about the same, but maybe a little harder. I keep waiting to figure out how to do it so it'll be easier. I think it's going to be easier. Well, and insecurity is a great part of what I do. So I'll be writing the book and I'll go, oh my God, I lost it. I was so good before. What happened to me? When did I lose it? And five minutes later, this is sheer genius. Someone's going to read that book that's already out there and I give this work of Shakespearean proportions. I check and that goes on all the time. And also I think one of the things I kind of conclude a little bit like, you can imagine a giant grass field. So the first time you're writing your book, you're slashing through the field to try to get to the other side, but you have no idea how long it is. You have no idea where you're going. You're getting a misdirection, but you can just keep slashing and you finally reach the end. Now you go back to the start. You have to do it again, but you can't hit where you've already slashed. So you start again. You've learned a little bit, so maybe it's faster that way, but you can't go and place the way you went before. Now you come back again. And it just keeps going, which is why as a writer also, you need new experiences in your life to get more grass growing. Wow, I really reached for that analogy. I'm not sure it works. But that's what I'm going with today. So three different people asked me, do you want me to plant any questions in the audience? I said, no, it won't be necessary. All right. An audience full of literary-minded, well-educated people like this, it can't be a shortfall and happily, I guess there we go. Once we unload. Yeah. Mr. Coben, I'm a huge fan. Thank you. And I read all your books and I just read your latest book. Thank you. And yes, it is a departure on the family side, but that's okay. But I noticed that you quoted some academic research. Yep. And is that, are you reading academic journals for your research or how did that come about? It was probably stumbled across a button on Twitter feed. No, I don't know. It was a fascinating, the article we were probably talking about was by Toby Moskowitz, who's a professor at the University of Chicago. He did a fascinating study, which should be interesting to anybody who's a sports fan, but he studied why home field advantage is an advantage. And it's not the reasons we think. It's not because you're more comfortable enough to travel. It's not that you're familiar with the place. It's not even that the crowd is on your side except in some way. What he found out is that you get more calls when you're at home. Not because the ref's trying to fix it, but because of social conformity when people are applauding or booing you, you subconsciously want to please those people. So the referees do favor the home field. This is all over the world, every country in the world, every sport in the world. I just found that kind of cool. So since my book involved a little bit of how crazy parents are with their kids in sports, I thought that would be kind of an interesting thing to throw in. Well, to follow up, I didn't know if you knew that Toby is a Purdue graduate. Oh, he's a Purdue graduate. There we go. And his father is a professor emeritus as well. So he still lives here in town. So I thought that was cool. I got a nice email from him. I didn't tell him I was doing it. I've never met him, but he sent me a nice email. I guess he heard from a lot. He goes, more people read my study in your book than when I did it. So that was a very nice one to say. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, Mr. Scoban. Thank you for coming to Purdue. Thank you. People that have grown up in New Jersey and people that haven't grown up in New Jersey don't like New Jersey. And you're from New Jersey. But at the same time, there's a lot of culture that affects this country that comes out of New Jersey. So how has your environment growing up in that state affected your writing? Well, it's no question we're all product of wherever we kind of grew up. New Jersey, it's interesting. I'm fortunate that my books are now in 43 languages around the world. And I don't say that to brag, but to kind of make a point. And my first movie of one of my books was a French movie. Yet my books are really New Jersey. And what I learned with the creative process and with almost most things you do in life is the more specific you are, the more universal the appeal. If I try to think, oh, I have readers in Bulgaria. Let me see if I can make this town more appeal to them. It never works. There's something very universal in what is specific. This goes for a friend who has a clothing line called Lily Pulitzer, which is these loud pink and greens. It looks like somebody threw up pink and green on a tie. And I was like, that's the weirdest thing. And he goes, when we try to be more universal and less, in my words, ugly, it didn't work. And so what I've learned about, and I think the New Jersey thing is just fascinating for people. We are Sinatra. We are Springsteen. We are the Sopranos and all those sort of things. It may be something with geography where really we're not a state, despite what people think. Half of us is the suburbs of New York. Half of us is the suburbs of Philadelphia. But we're the poor cousins of both, so we have a little bit of attitude. I don't know what it is, but there's no question that New Jersey is a huge part of who I am and what I've become. And I love New Jersey. Stop that. Everyone loves New Jersey. Jeez, I've been places in Indiana. You gotta love New Jersey. Come on. Let's be honest. To drive out to certain areas, you're just a lot happier than New Jersey. For the motto of certain cities is, people make fun of New Jersey with a big question mark, right? I'll cut you some slack if you can explain how it became, to call itself the garden state. That I never did get, yeah. But you know, the one thing about New Jersey is like, I live in this old Victorian from 1865. It looks like the Adams family's house brightly painted. The whole town is all gardens and things like that. We stick all of our garbage on the New Jersey turnpike in Garden State Parkway where everybody drives. So it looks like a bad scene from the Terminator movie when you drive on those roads. But you get off, it's not so bad. We'll take your word for it. So, oh, Sabrina, hello. Hi. Welcome. Hi, and I'm from Delaware. So I'm not sure I agree with you on the loving New Jersey part. But I do have a question. Earlier, you were talking a little bit about one of the characters in your novels. And I was wondering if you could just explain. It sounded like you had a pretty kind of personal relationship with that character. I was wondering if you could just explain a little bit more how you view your characters while you're writing, after you're writing, if you're like, wow, that was a weird character that just happened there, or something like that. Well, there is, first of all, I hate saying anything that sounds foo-foo or mad. I hate when writers talk, oh, I don't write the books. God comes down and my fingers start moving. And the characters decide where the story is going. So most of me realizes I just make this stuff up. I have a character, Myron Bolotar, has been in my 10 of my novels. And sometimes I'll get a call, well, what's Myron doing now? And I'll get a call from on Friday night. It's exceptional. I just made him up. But that's the norm. But the other side of the coin is, these people do, in a sense, come to life. Like, I start usually, again, there's different ways. I know some writers will actually write like 50-page biosingles based on their characters. I start more with a core. And I kind of learn about them as I write. And I try to develop character not so much by telling you in 1865 this happened to number whatever, but by how they react. So everything that happens to it, I sort of say, how is this person reacting? And a few pages in, that person's reacting just naturally without thought. The most important thing I think about a character is not necessarily being nice or likeable but real. And I do say, and this is not necessarily likeable, is would you want to go to Harry's and have a beer with that person? That doesn't mean they're nice or likeable. That could be boring as well outdoors. But would you want to spend the evening sitting there talking to that person and listening to what their life is about? And sometimes that could be a really evil person, frankly. And that's sort of the gauge I try to do when I'm creating a character. I want even the smallest character to have a reason for what they're doing. For those just where the stranger, even the worst bad guy, you have to understand their motives. Otherwise, I don't like monsters. I have no interest in psychos. I have no interest in serial killers. Every person has to have a reason. And a reason where you can almost say, I could almost see myself doing that. Thanks. In that gray zone you were talking about in between. It's like a foul line at a baseball field, right? It's made of lime, fair and foul are very, very close to one another. And if you can mess that up a little bit, tramp line, now fair becomes foul and foul becomes fair. That's where you want to play. That's where you want to play. Yes, sir. I love the bowl of our series and I've read almost all of them. But I end up feeling kind of guilty and wonder about myself because my favorite character is Wynne. And it's sort of like liking Francis Underwood on House of Cards or Walter White. But he's close to a psychopath. Yeah, he's nice. But I really enjoy the parts about Wynne more than everything. What's wrong with me? If you're reading my books, you need no help, sir. You know, he's so much fun to create. I'm actually doing a TV show right now in England called The Five. And I have a character who's a little bit like this. And the network keeps saying, oh my God, he can't do it. I'm like, yes, he can. The more sometimes violent are things he'll do bad. This is my job as a writer. I want you to love the guy who's doing bad. And that's a real challenge and really fun. And there's a part of us that loves that. That's the thing. Wynne has easy answers in life. For Wynne, it's all black and white. You cross a certain line, you're dead to him. And there's something that, inside of all of us, that has a certain, that appeals to us. I based when, I just want to say, I based when, I don't normally base people on friends or characters. All of my friends always think the good guys are based on them. That loser with halitosis, that was me, right? No, they never think that. It's always, that kind of gets all the chicks. That's me, right? But I based Wynne on my college roommate who has a name equally obnoxious to Windsor Hornlock with a third. Very good looking blonde, old world, family came over in the Mayflower asking for a tea time, kind of a jutting jaw. And he used to, before we go out, we were in college to fraternity parties. He would actually, he would look in the mirror and go, it must suck to be ugly. You can't make that stuff up. So I took him and I made him a little psychopath. But thank you very much, it's kind of you to say. I think he once told me he was all that but he couldn't fight his way out of a laundry bag. He's real life, he can't, that's right. So you're writing in an absolutely massive genre with mystery and thriller. And I would kind of like to write in science fiction fantasy. So I'd like to ask you if someone, as someone who has become successful, when you're writing in a genre that has that much competition, how do you cut through the noise? I really don't know the market. I'm not good with the word genre. I kind of always, I look at it more like a haiku or a sonata or within that, it's a form. What I've loved about crime fiction or thrillers or mysteries or everyone is it compels you to tell a story. I'm not just gazing at my navel. I'm writing something that is compelling and moving. If you think about it, if I asked you to name anybody here named their top three or four favorite books that are 100 years old, they'll be a crime in every one. I mean, none of them will be just a guy walking through life. It's gonna be a crime or war, which is crime in a sense, if they're old enough, Dostoevsky and that kind of thing. I wouldn't worry so much about the competition except to read it. What you just have to do is write the damn best book you can. I really wish there was another answer. People always look for, I get questions about like, well, how many, how do you get more people on your Twitter or your Facebook or your social media? In my view, those are completely irrelevant. The biggest breakout book of the last five years has been by my friend Gillian Flynn Gondrylm. So I tell people, see how she did it. Look at her social media campaign. Look at her Facebook page or Twitter page. She doesn't have one. Doesn't even have a Twitter page. Doesn't even have one. So rather than worry about the competition or whatever else, just write the damn best book you can. If people wanna read it, it also doesn't matter if it's gonna be an e-book or stone tablets. They're gonna read it. People ask me, the e-book revolution, every time they start Amazon, I'm like a little kid, like la la la, I can't hear you. I can't hear you. I'm just gonna put my head down and write the best book I can because I know if I write the best book I can, I've put myself in the best position to succeed. I've done the most I can do. I'm not smart enough to know if Amazon's right or Hachette's right. I'm only smart enough to write. So my advice to you, if that's the word, is don't worry about what else is out there. Just write something so great that we're going to find it. Hope you do. I hope you do too. Okay. We've all heard the stories about rejections and as a fellow writer- Are you talking about my high school dating life now? Or you told me we were gonna do personal stuff. Yes, as a fellow writer, I live that life as well. So we would all, I'm sure many of us would be curious if you're willing to share before you kind of broke in. How many rejections have you ever tracked? I was lucky that I could publish right away but by a very, very small house. I was 26. So I've been published for a while, but you face rejection as a writer all the time. I still get reviews. I still get all sorts of weird kind of rejection sort of thing. Not the publishing ones anymore, but movie ones or this is gonna happen, that's gonna happen. It's why, by the way, in today's world, do not read your Amazon reviews or anything else. You should just lose your mind completely. I always just assume it was somebody I was mean to in high school. Even though I was always nice in high school, but somebody was mean. But it took me a while. My case, though, was literally, like I said, I mentioned Myron Bolotar making $5,000 a book. What I didn't say is I wrote two books before that played dead and Miracle Cure. And I've actually mentally blocked, but I think it was $1,502,000 for those as advances. So I try to appreciate each step that I have, but yeah, when I tried to move up from that level, which was two books, and then I realized I couldn't stay in that particular ghetto. I had to move to a bigger ghetto, so to speak. I had five years of rejections. Here's the thing about rejections also that's hard to take, is that whatever reason they give you for rejecting you is baloney. All really should read every rejection as it just didn't quite work for us. They'll make up some, we're not doing medical thrillers now. Oh, we're not doing one-arm jugglers right now. That's nonsense. It's never that in market. Pay no attention to the market. I hate that too. It's like, oh, well, you know, the Gone Girl kind of books are in right now. We're Da Vinci Code books are in now. I'll write that. First of all, you won't write it well. It's gonna be a year before you finish it so that trend will be over. And it doesn't make a difference. The example I often use is, I don't know if you guys know Alexander McCall Smith who wrote the number one ladies detective club, which is a huge, massive group of best sellers. Trust me, no publisher was saying, you know what books I'm looking for? Fat African Women Solving Crimes in Rhodesia. No one was asked, or by Botswana. No one was asking for that in publishing. No one. Or when Walter Moseley broke out, no one was saying, yeah, we want a black detective in Watts in 1948. No one was saying that. They were just good. Wow, that was a long answer to a really simple question. So it is like high school dating. They never give you the right reason, right? Yeah. That's the thing, I got toughened up by high school dating. Yeah. I was used to rejection. I got it. Publishing seemed easy after high school dating. All right, well, I'm a student novelist also and that was actually gonna be my question, but I'll expand on it further, I guess. How did you go about finding an agent? Did you have any difficulties in that process? And how do you think that has changed just over the course of your career, that publishing process? Unfortunately, I don't really know what it's like to get an agent now, so I can't really answer. The market's changing so rapidly and there's self-publishing and there's different kind of things now and some people don't have agents at all. For me, it's like, you're asking a basketball question, I'm talking about peach baskets, you know what I mean? So I don't really know the best way of doing that anymore. I'm not the right person to ask, but all I can say is if you don't have a completely done novel, not a great idea, not a great 100 pages, not a great 150 pages, not almost done, oh, my first draft isn't completed, done, done, solidly finished, ready to go and get rejected by everybody in the world because you're very young, you're gonna get rejected, you send it out to agents, start writing the next one while it's out because trust me, the book's not as good as you think it is, you're just too young. And then next or second or third, I mean my first published book when I was 26 was already my third book I had written. The best way to learning how to write is to write. So I would not worry so much, again, I don't know the markets either, but I found that people who pay too much attention to the markets, let's put it this way. All the successful writers I know and I know them all, I know Stephen King, I know John Grisham, I know Dan Brown, in fact Dan Brown and I went to college together, we were fraternity buddies. I'm not even the biggest selling author in my own fraternity. I've sold 65 million books, I'm not the biggest, I'm not even close to the biggest in my own fraternity, my own college fraternity. But I don't know, none of them were worried about marketing or agents or whatever else, all they worried about was telling the darn best story they could tell, the darn best book and the rest of that somehow falls into place. I know that's not the answer you want to hear, but that's the real answer. All right, so as a writer, and you've got the 27 books out there, are you able to focus on just one at a time or is it a process? I know I've written three books at the same time and then you've got the marketing all at the same time. How do you balance, I guess, having a family, writing different books, the marketing for one book while you're writing another one, while you're editing a third, how do you find the balance in all of that? Well, first, and again, every writer is different so I don't knock that, I can only write one book at a time, I'm like a boxer in the ring and by the end, the 15th round, I can barely lift my arms, I'm almost getting knocked out, I finished the book, I have nothing left, I can't even, I can't move for like three, literally, when I finish a book, I write 40 pages usually the last day, I can't move for like a week, I've got to play off NHL, play off Beard, my kids have thrown bananas in my room and ran away, there's just nothing left, I can only do one at a time and market one at a time. The real answer, the way I like to think of it is, it's my job, so it's like asking anybody in this room, well, how do you fix pipes when you have a family at home, how do you, this is my job, I have to do my job, I can't be above my job, so yeah, of course I have family at home, I have other obligations, just as everyone in this room has a job and they have to do it and still control their family and balance the rest of their life, so even if it's an artistic process or not that, we can decide if it's art or not, but you have to treat it like a job and every great writer I know, or writer produces treats you like a job, there's a great quote that says, amateurs wait for inspiration to arrive and the rest of us just get to work. And that was, I actually read that quote, it wasn't by him, but in the Philip Roth book it was about as literary a writer as you get. So it's the same way a plumber can't one day wake up and say, I can't do pipes today, I'm a little too important, I have to watch. It's the same thing with a writer, so yeah, you just have to figure out the balance. And here's the thing, and this is my being tough on you thing, is if you can't find the balance, if you don't have enough time to write, you're not meant to be a writer. Mary Higgins-Clark, one of the dearest women I know at the age of 37, Mary had five young children and her husband died. The next day, her mother-in-law died. Mary is now 86, so this is over 50 years ago, okay? She was left with no money, she had to work a full-time job, she used to get, and get five kids ready and no help back in those days, as you know. So Mary would wake up and write between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. of where the kids did. You can always find time to write. Don't tell me you can't find time to write because that's an excuse. I'm much like, oh, this? This isn't weight gain, it's water retention. We have to one day face up. The great 20th century philosopher, Cher, said, Cher once said, excuses won't lift your butt. It's the same thing with writing, I accept no excuses. For myself, and I tell this, what I'm telling you now is why I kick myself, because I feel the same way, oh my God, I'm overwhelmed. I'm like, toughen up, this is not only is it a job, it's the greatest job in the world. I mean, I'm not gonna fool you. People ask, another panel I was on asked, what's bad about being a best selling author? Nothing. Nothing. What's bad about being a, nothing, it's awesome. Thank you. We have an empty mic over here that's calling out for somebody maybe from this hemisphere, so. Yes, go ahead, please. How much time is spent rewriting? A lot. I don't write like this. I write like this. Each day I go back and I reread what I wrote the day before to get a running start. And then every 75 pages, 50, 75 pages, I go back to the beginning and I reread. So by the time my book is done, the first chapter's been rewritten at least 10 times. And I write better at the end, but I'm a big believer in rewriting. And this is very freeing, too. Am I allowed to say, wow, I'm sorry. A great, one of the best books on writing, if you want a really great book, it's also funny on writing by Anne Lamotte called Bird by Bird. And she describes it, she has a chapter called The Shitty First Draft. And what it does is it gives you permission, which is so true, to stink your first draft. So the difference sometimes, people are paralyzed. If you're a writer out there who's like, kind of afraid to start because it's not, you think, oh, it stinks, it stinks. Remember, I do, too, 27 books. Still thinks it stinks every day. But the first draft, I look at it like it's like diamond mining. So you take out this big, ugly rock, but that's what's really valuable. And the rewriting, which takes a long time, is what makes it into something shiny and beautiful that you want to wear. But you need to, some people are looking for that beautiful stone in the dirty ready that's gonna be right on your finger, and that doesn't exist. You gotta pull that thing out, don't worry if it stinks. I gotta turn that part of my brain off that says this stinks, not worry about it. Some days I said, I write, and I'm like, oh my God, this is, it's so terrible. Every word is a case of mental constipation that could kill a horse. It's just, and then some days, there's like an angelic voice singing in my ear, not often. Some days, and when I look at the books now, I can't tell you what I wrote on what pages, because when you rewrite, they all become the same. You can always, you can, we're on a great quote, you can always fix bad pages, you can't fix no pages. I rewrite a tremendous amount, I'm a firm believer, every writer I know rewrites, except that one guy, but none of us want to hang out with him in the bar. Thanks for the question, good question. Yes sir. All these questions are great by the way. I thought you might talk for a moment about the tell no one experience. The, it has a reputation on its own, of course, and I'd like to hear the background. I think you're even briefly in the film for a minute. I'm in the movie. I'm in the movie, yeah. I thought you might talk about that for a few moments. For those who don't know, tell no one was a French, it's actually considered a, and I don't take credit for this, a classic, it's on, by the way, if you have Netflix or Amazon Prime, it's on it for free, it does have subtitles. It's a French movie called tell no one, based on my book. It was nominated for nine Cezars, which is their version of the Oscar. It won four of them. I'm in it, I'm in it for about eight seconds. I'm in the background, I don't say anything, but I was brilliant really. I kind of steal the movie. And I wasn't nominated for a Cezar for best supporting actor. I assume the French still have anti-Semitism issues. It's the only explanation for it. But it was a wonderful experience from beginning to end. Such a wonderful experience. I just did a six-hour TV show, I just finished filming. And I got to have a real part, I got to play Dana Delaney from Desperate Housewives, husband. She demanded I write sex scene, they said, no, married, leave me alone, but this is why I write fiction people. So it was a great experience. The book itself, if I could, this is for people who, no, I explained before about how I come up with ideas. And the example I actually often use is tell no one because the ones I gave you were really kind of like neat, like, okay, he thinks this happens in his life and he thinks what if, but mostly it's kind of like your brain is jumping around, like, have you ever had one of those nights, you can't fall asleep, right? And you're lying in bed and you're in, because you can't fall asleep because you're thinking of something like inane, like, what was the name of the dog on Petticoat Junction? Because Bobby Joe and Billy Sue. And you start wondering, how do I sort of think it's something so dumb? You try to trace your thoughts back and bouncing all over. And it started with how come Burger King doesn't serve Mountain Dew? You know what I mean? Like, all over. So the idea for tell no one came to me, I was, I mean, anything to stimulate an idea, I was watching a really bad movie on TV. I won't mention a name in a movie, message in a bottle. And, but what struck me about the story was it was this, this was a love story that we've seen a million times where the man loses his wife, right? The man's wife dies and he can't go on. And then a hot Baybok's buying, he's fine. Have you noticed that in these movies, ladies? In that case, it was Robin Ryder, it's mini driver, or Meg Ryan or somebody, and all of a sudden the guy is perky. So I asked myself in those moments, I get serious, what about the man who can't go on? What about the man who's truly lost his soulmate? Is there a way I can find redemption? So this part of the idea, it's over here. Before I was telling you how I lost my parents at a young age. So I have four kids at that time at three and I was watching, one day I was thinking about the same way we all do. Wouldn't it be great if they were alive? Wouldn't it be great if they could have met their grandkids? And I'm looking at a webcam on my computer, a street cam, I go, what would I do right now if I saw my parents on this webcam? I took these two ideas and I mashed them together. Man and a woman happily married, the wife is murdered. Eight years pass, he still can't get over her death. He gets an email, he clicks a hyperlink, he sees a webcam, his wife walks by. And the little Homer Simpson part of my mind goes, whoo, that's that moment. And what's really not to get too heady, what's really weird is, I thought of this little idea in my little home in Jersey, and I was on the Champs-Elysees with the top actors in France going to the premiere of it. And I don't care who you are, if you're jaded by that, man. It was the coolest thing in the world, it really was. Thank you. Yes, sir. I've enjoyed the conversation tonight. This has been very enjoyable. And you've mentioned several times quotes from other authors and things. So as somebody who spends your day putting words on a page, how much time do you also spend reading other people's words? And I guess kind of the back and forth, the influence that that maybe plays in your own work. A good question. I don't know anybody who's a musician who doesn't listen to a lot of music. I don't know anybody who's a writer who didn't read a lot. I read a lot more earlier, though. The problem is now, I'd say that if you wanna be a writer, you have to read a lot. But every time I read, I'm feeling guilty I'm not writing. In fact, my whole life is feeling guilty I'm not writing. This is just something I live with. And if you don't have this, if you're trying to be a writer and you don't have this, you're probably not gonna be a writer. But whenever I'm doing anything else from driving the kids in a carpool, there's a little voice in my head that says you should be home writing. Always. Because Mitch and Sherry, we know as well, the only interest in life is writing in my family. So a few years ago, because of this, I decided to take up golf. Why didn't smash this glass and jam it in my eye? I don't know. Would've been preferable, but instead I took up golf. And even when I'm out there and it's a beautiful day and I'm hitting the ball, there's still that voice that's always saying, you should be home writing. Usually it's a guy I almost did with my air and tee shot. I'm the wrong fairway. But every once in a while it is, so that just always sort of plays into my head. So yeah, you have to read, but I read less now than I used to. I still love to read. I'll read the back of a cereal box if it's available to me. I'll read menus. I have to be reading. One of my favorite quotes again, this one from Thomas Jefferson. I don't know if you know this story and many of you probably did. The Library of Congress was founded, it burned down, and Jefferson sold all of his books to make the Library of Congress exist. Notice he didn't donate them. Jefferson sold them for a lot of money. And he said, because I'm old, I don't need books anymore. And he started buying books back and he wrote a letter to John Adams, where he famously said, I cannot live without books, which is the motto of the Library of Congress today. Fun historical facts with Harlan Cobain. Thanks. Who you're reading in, we won't call it a genre. Who you're reading in the general space that you were occupied with that you like? You know, first I read a lot of book people that you don't know because I get advanced copies. There's a young, and I really don't want to name the obvious people like Lee Child and Michael Conley. And the problem with this question is they're all my friends and I leave someone out and one of you will tweet it and I'll get in trouble. But Tana French is a new young, right? Well, she's not that new anymore, but a wonderful woman from Ireland who really writes interesting books that I like to tell people who are looking for somebody new in the crime field to try out, she's really good, Tana French. This may be a bit loaded, but to what extent do you attribute your education to your success or your ability as a writer? Education and success? The one thing we never want to hear is how much luck is involved. So I don't know how much is luck and how much is education, how much is hard work, how much of any of it is. I went to Amherst College in Massachusetts, which is a small liberal arts school, wonderful school. And while I was there for some reason, there was a lot of writers. There's only 400 kids of grade, as I mentioned, Dan Brown was there, David Foster Wallace lived next door to me, freshman year. God, we had, I think, five published authors in my class, Mark Costello, who wrote The Big If, and Bill Amond as Foxtrot Comics, we had a weird, diverse class. But the one thing that I do think Amherst taught me more than just how to write, and one of the things I hope people get from the liberal arts part of their education is the ability to learn how to critically think. And I think that that's really, really important in being a writer. I was always a better math student than I was an English student. My math SAT score was 200 points higher than my English, 200, 400. Not quite, I made Amherst College. But that was more on my basketball. But that's sort of critical thinking to be able to see and solve problems, I think, helps you in everything in life. And that's one thing that Amherst College is very good about was making you read and think critically about things, being able to analyze things. One of my jobs, as a, we have, of course, a, well, your greatest governor is sitting on the stage with me right here. But as a political person, one of the things I'm able to do as a writer is I can actually see all viewpoints pretty well. Doesn't mean I agree with all viewpoints, but I don't, I never, I don't demonize your side because it's my job as a writer. Even if I'm writing somebody on something else, I have to make, I have to see their viewpoint. And it's really one of the things that you should learn at college also, is to be able to get other people's viewpoints. Don't have to agree with them, but rather than what we do in today's world, not to make a big lecture this Fox MSNBC world, but really if we stop that, we could just see the other side of it, we could still disagree, but we could do it civilly. And that's one of the things I also learned at college. Okay, that's it. That was my, that was my serious moment now. Someone has a funny question, please. Thank you, good question. Comes one. Here we go. In the nick of time, thank you. Okay, so I have to admit, I haven't read your books. Stoner. No. No. No. But my mom, she's a ginormous fan, and she sounds intelligent. She is. Do you listen to everything she says? She's been freaking out about this all week. And so on the way here, she started playing a book on her phone on her Kindle. It was found. And I haven't, I didn't know any background besides what my mom had told me. And what I really liked was like, I'm a 15 year old sophomore in high school. And from what I remember, Mickey, he's a sophomore in high school too. And he was talking about when he went to basketball practice, and how he was like the odd one out. I really had a connection with him. So I really liked that. Sorry, this is really long. In my free time at school, when I'd get done with my geometry homework in class, I'd pull out my notebook and I liked to write. And everyone looks at me funny, but I just, I have this other notebook that's all torn up and I cover up what I'd already written so nobody can look over my shoulder and read it. But I've thought about like being an English teacher or being a writer, but I just, I don't know about it yet. And, but I just wanted to know, like what moment did you know you wanted to be a writer? That's a good question. That was a great question, by the way. But, thank you, thank you. I was a lot older than you. I mean, again, sometimes I was already, I've already criticized other authors for things they've said, but the other one I'm going to give you is the writer who says, I always knew I'd be a writer. When I was a three month old fetus, scratching out sonatas in my mother's womb, I wanna, I was over 20. I was a senior in college. I decided I wanted to write a book about an experience I had. And I started to write and I kinda got like a virus. I didn't write, the book I wrote was horrible, but I got this writing bug from that that made me wanna keep writing. And what I would suggest for you is to keep writing. Don't write over it though, because we wanna know what you thought. You're gonna wanna look at the years from now and hate it, that's part of it, okay? You're gonna look at these things and there's notebooks years from now and hate them, but it's like building a step to something much higher up. You still need those bottom steps. You really do. So like even I look back at my old books and I can't read my old books because I cringe. And if I ask the people in the room, right? All of you had that paper in college or a few years ago in high school depending on how you thought it was brilliant, right? You find it now and you go, what was I thinking, right? That's what you're gonna do with your thing, but just keep writing. I'm telling you just, even if it's a dumb thought, there's no judgment in your notebook. This is the beauty of writing. The beauty of writing is there's no judgment. It might just end up being therapy. It might be something you wanna show the whole world one day, but just write it down. And that's why I always say if you can give a person also the gift of loving to read, the person loves to read, they're never lonely. They'll never be bored in their life. It's a wonderful thing. Thank you very much for your question, that was great. Well, you guys finally got your nerve up here. About the time we're running down, but thank you. So we'll get these five and please go first. Well, now that you have established your name, I'm wondering, first of all, when you were a starting writer, what kind of feedback did you show your wife or you showed a fellow writer? And now do you find, and I assume that the editor has helped edit and all that other sort of stuff, do you find that they're just kind of relying more on you, that you have less help and you're taking on or you find it harder to get good feedback or all these writers that you do know? Do you guys read each other's stuff and oh, here's a page I can't work through. Do you mind just reading this one page? I mean, I have actually dinner once a month for the group of mystery writers. We never even talk about writing. Writers, you know, we never talk about it. I've never shown them a page. I've never asked them for help. They've never, it's just, it's not, it's not done. There's two answers. One is in the early days my wife did read it and her job basically was to just tell me it was brilliant no matter how bad it was. Oh yeah, honey, if never, she's still, oh yeah, honey, it never been better. Really, really? Yeah, it's great, it's great. Because I was paralyzed, I'd be paralyzed. She would like to write, you know what, you have a typo here, you wrote the word the twice. Oh, it stings, doesn't it? The whole thing, I'll just throw it out right now. So in those days, that's sort of what I needed. The other thing is, while it's great to have feedback, most writers do have, if you don't have a sense of if it's good or bad, you're probably in a lot of trouble too. I'm usually my toughest editor. No one hates the book as much as I do when we're first editing it. So I'm able to critically read, but really mostly when I want someone to reread, it's like when somebody asks me if I will read their manuscripts, which by the way, I never do, it can be my brother, I never do. They really don't want criticism. They want to hear how brilliant it is and I'm gonna get him an agent and they're gonna be a bit best-selling author. It's the same thing with me. When I'm writing it, I don't want to hear anything critical. I'll figure out something's wrong with it later. So I don't really show it, my editor's supposed to see it at the 100 page mark by my contract and he knows also just tell me it's brilliant so I keep going. You have a problem with it, tell me about it later on. That's my own way of working. Yes ma'am. Uh-oh, cold feet. Oh, she got your question, okay. All right, thank you. So I have a question about kind of the writing process. You say you give yourself permission to suck for a little while. So I guess my question is, when you're writing, how much attention do you pay to things like tents, head hopping, like adverbs? I know that, you know, I talked about Elmore Leonard and he says no adverbs ever. Like how much attention you paid to that while you're actually writing? Not much, I'm telling the story. The first time I'm writing, I'm telling the story. I also, a lot of times when I do my first drafts on paper, like 10 pages at a time on paper and then put it on a computer. The reason I, I don't always do this, I'll do whatever's gonna work, but the reason I like doing that and I recommend it, is that first of all, there's something freeing in childlike about hand and paper. Crossing out is easier than deleting because when you cross out you can still sort of exist versus deleting on a computer. I draw arrows, I can do pictures and I don't count them as done pages till they're on the computer. So this way my first draft is actually my second draft already. So that's one of the different techniques I do. What was it a part of the question? I'm sorry. I was just wondering like, you know, you talk about things like, oh I, yeah. You're sense head hopping, that kind of stuff. I just tell the story. Like the first time, it's as though you and I are sitting around a campfire and I'm telling you a gripping story. I don't worry about anything else the first time. I'll go back on. I've written things so fast I forget, you know, I forget periods, you know, I just keep writing it and then I'll go back. Remember, you can always go back. It's so important to memorise. So I just want to get it down. I just want to get out all the stuff that I can, all that good stuff. And sometimes literally my fingers can't keep up with my brain. I'm going so fast. But that's the way I try to do the first draft. Those are the best first drafts. I can get it out just sort of a, just one writer once said vomit it out. I'm not quite that way, but get it out as fast as I can and then go back. Remember, you can always go back. Thank you. Thank you. Have there been times in the past where you felt creatively, creatively drained or your imagination isn't just up to par? And if so, how do you go back to where you were before? I feel it almost every week. I mean, literally, that's just part of my life. As I said before, that insecurity thing, it never goes away. And when I finish a book, I have no ideas left. There's a little, when I finish a book, the voice in my brain goes, that's it, you're done. Thank you for playing, you're a writer. We'll take home the home version of the game. You're going to get a job now someplace else and have to really work. And that's just part of the process. And one of the things I like to do sometimes is I'll even go to like art museums or just do things to fill up my brain again. Just do things and stimulate. And this is how my brain works. My brain kind of never shuts off. So I'm always looking at everything. How can I make this into something else? How can I make this into a story? How can I look at this person and turn them into what is their life really like? I'll make up, as I'm looking at your faces, I will actually make up whole back stories for you. Things that happen to you and your child. That's just how, and I like my mind working that way. So I'm like, the Daniels have had dinner with me and they'll probably know it. Sometimes I'm rude. I get distracted, I look away. They're friends that they know about Harlins and La La Landrode. So, but my friends kind of know this about me. Thank you. Yes, sir. I really like the idea that you say, like take that first draft as the big ugly rock and then shine it until it becomes beautiful, but when do you know it is shiny enough? How do you balance between being a perfectionist and having something that is good enough? Well, when you start rewriting and you're just changing things that aren't making it better or worse, but changing it. You know what I mean? Like you start adding the, oh, I need a the instead of a that, or you're reading it and you're realizing it's not getting any better, it's just getting different. That's usually the sign. It's a little bit like raising a child though, like your child reaches a certain age and you gotta go to kindergarten and you gotta let them go out in the world and they're gonna get knocked around. They're not ready. You're like, there's a mother, no, no, stay home one more year with mommy. You know, no, no, no. You have to let the kid out in the world. It's gonna get knocked around them and it might not be ready. So what? Someone's gonna reject it, you'll take it back, you'll rewrite it. When you send that also, it doesn't freeze the world either, right? So you send it out. I always tell people who are waiting from publishers, write something else, either keep working on that book and fixing it and making better or better start writing the next one. Because chances are this one, if it's your first book, is not really that good. Very few first books really are good. I know we all think they are. We're very, you know, because they're your darlings, but that's sort of what I would, that's the way I do it. I don't know, there's not a set answer. Maybe the draft before would have been just as good maybe the draft after would have been somewhat better. I don't know, it's a feel thing. So how do you come the fear of like that affecting your reputation? You have something that is not as good yet and you put it out and then it might just be the worst novel you ever wrote. My reputation's not that important. Okay. I mean at this stage of the game it is, you have to be, it's funny, I mentioned it's insecure but you also have to be arrogant as hell to do this, right? I'm writing 400 pages, 500 pages, I'm expecting to spend 20 bucks on it and spend eight hours with me. Wow, what arrogance. Also, what a ridiculous honor that some of you have decided to do that. I mean, I don't take that for granted for a second. I work really, really hard on that. But like, I sometimes sit and think that you've chosen me of those 100,000 books in a library, you've chosen to spend your money and spend that time with me. Man, I better deliver. Or I'm gonna, it's really the most flattering thing someone can do but I don't know. I mean the answer is, you have to take a risk. People are like, I'm afraid if I do this someone will steal my idea. Well, life's risk, man. I mean, that's a fun risk to take and all of us get hit. We've all learned from our, you've learned from your failures in life as well as just more of your successes, right? It's the only thing you learn from. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's why you're here, right? I mean, you're allowed to make mistakes while you're here. So don't worry about your reputation. You don't have that great a reputation either, sir. Trust me, neither one of us have good reputation as it is. So we got two more. This one first. So I'd like to start off by saying I'm not a writing major. So, sorry if anybody else had some questions. I wasn't a writing major either. I was a political science major, which is a euphemism for I have no idea what I want to do with my life. No idea. I'm dating a writing major so hopefully that makes up for it. That's even better. I married a doctor because my mother wanted me to go to medical school. It was much easier. I just married one. So I've been writing short stories since very early on and in the very beginning, what really brought me into a passion of writing and reading is one particular character. And I'm actually considering getting into seriously writing a book about this character, but I'm worried that that character being so close to me might, I might look back and say, wow, I wish I would have waited and actually did this when I was a better writer. What would you, what are your thoughts on that? Don't say, you're gonna get smarter and stronger and better as you, people don't save up an idea, write the best thing you can now. Don't worry about that kind of thing. You're not gonna go in 10 years from now saying, oh, I wish I'd written that book. I wrote 10 years. Write it now, because when you would want, if you'd want to write it again and differently, you'll just change a few things around anyway. And if it wasn't a huge success, no one's gonna know about it. You can take it and steal it. You can always steal from yourself. So don't hold back. I mean, I would write the best, whatever you want to write now, don't think, oh, I'd better save it or wait for a better writer. Write it now. If you have the greatest idea in the world now and you think, I have the greatest idea but I want to save it for a better writer, that's nonsense. Write that idea now. Get it out now, because it's probably not the greatest idea, first of all. The second of all, it's like, you know, it's like you're playing a basketball game, right? And you're saying, oh, I'll save this, I'll save my energy for next game. The next game. This is the NCAAs. This is, you know, Kentucky sort of didn't say this, oh, we'll save it for next game. That's it. You lose that game, it's over. So just write like that, write with that kind of fear and that kind of daring because that's how you're gonna get better. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. Look at me handing out advice. Like I know what I'm talking about. Good evening. Good evening. To begin with, I'm an engineer so I'm probably the least likely person to be in this room. To begin with. I'm happier here. Like, as you said earlier about making backstories about people, I sometimes just happen to not just stop it backstories but I kind of make up stories with see my friends and as the main characters and I start to write, like just because I like to, I start writing about it somewhere. What happens is after a point I lose my concentration and I get nitpicky about small stuff like grammar for periods, commas and when I get that, I kind of feel conscious about what I'm writing. I get someone to kind of read it for me and then I get the negative feedbacks after which I basically follow and I'm like, okay, I'm giving this up. So what would you suggest if you were in my position? Don't let anybody else read it. If you got confidence in yourself, my friend, just keep writing it. One day it'll be good enough. You go out there and you'll, look, as I said, we all have gotten rejected. That's just part of it. It's a little bit, this is the other thing, you're young, you're just starting out, okay? If I was to say to you, you've never played basketball before, come play basketball with me right now and you're like, wow, I missed a bunch of shots. Yeah, yeah, it takes some time. It's like any other skill. Writing takes some natural talent and a lot of work and a lot of time. People expect for some reason because we've all write that we can write. Yeah, you gotta write. So what we do is if I was playing basketball, I would go out right now and practice alone with nobody watching how bad of a shot I am and eventually my shot gets a little better. You're right now practicing your shot, dude. It might be better than you know, but that's what you're doing. Do it alone, don't worry about what people say. Thank you. Well, this audience just got an awful lot of advice for free. I think you're going to have a little round of applause. So we always like to have a memento of some kind for our guests and of course tonight, no exception. I now see we blew it. I should have gone got some golden black shoelaces. But I didn't know. But Kathy, please show me who's your best. That's good. You needed a little, they didn't teach you the bounce pass in junior high. So now, so Harlan, this is a little something special. It's signed by our coach, Matt Painter. But more to the point, it's signed by somebody we're really proud of here at Purdue. Brian Cardinal was a great player here. And later on, and I'll tell you why I thought of this. Brian holds an NBA record that will probably never be matched. He has holds the record for the most money paid per minute played. The smart Purdue guy. $6,072.97 to be precise. Wow. He may be the only guy I'll ever meet who got paid more money for putting in less time than you did. So there, I thought you had had it. Thank you. That's fantastic. Thank you. Please thank Harlan for this. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Sure.