Outlines

Check out "John Grisham, 20 Years of Writing" on the blog "shaffer's notebook" (shaffer'snotebook.wordpress.com).

Blogger Todd Shaffer compiled Grisham's comments on writing from numerous interviews. Grisham describes how he got started, sneaking off for a half hour as often as possible to write "A Time to Kill" while carrying on a modest law practice and serving in the Mississippi Legislature.

Grisham is a great advocate of starting with outlines. Shaffer writes: "Grisham outlines his stories extensively. Sometimes these outlines take longer to write than the manuscript. And at any given time he may be working on several outlines for different stories."

The outline contains two-paragraph synopses for each chapter in the story. Although tedious, outlining cuts down tremendously on the editing later.

"The more time I spend on the outline, the easier it is to write the book," Grisham said in an interview with Borders. And in an interview with Slushpile.net he said, "The outlining process is no fun, but it forces the writer to see the entire story."

Shaffer describes Grisham as a "self-taught writer, driven by instinct and by critical reading."

Grisham was the best-selling author of the 1990s, selling more than 60 million books. Pelican Brief was number one with 11 million copies. Grisham had four other novels in the top 10 (#2 The Client, #5 The Firm, #9 The Chamber, #10 The Runaway Jury).

The next most popular authors were Stephen King (38 million sold), Danielle Steel, Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy.

Grisham did not let up in his second decade as an author. He writes one book a year (he's at 22 and counting). At last count, 235 million Grisham books were in print worldwide, translated into 29 languages. Nine of his novels have been turned into films.