Harlan Coben: It’s Never Too Late to Start Your Creative Life

Harlan Coben spent decades insisting his novels had nothing to do with his life. Then he went looking, and found his life inside every single one of them.

With over 100 million books sold in forty-six languages and a run of number one Netflix hits including Fool Me Once, Missing You and I Will Find You, Harlan Coben is one of the most widely read storytellers on the planet. His new book, Plot Twist: Life, Craft, and the Messy First Draft, is both a memoir and a writing guide, because he can no longer separate the two. He is also, at this point, one of the most credible voices arguing that the creative work you keep postponing does not require a bigger life than the one you already have.

In this conversation, you’ll explore:

The two-word question he has been asking since he was a kid, and how it turned a boring family hike into a global hit Why he wrote three complete novels that nobody published, and flatly refuses to count them as failures What incremental ambition means in practice, and the modest first goal he set that most writers today would be embarrassed to admit to The two things fear does to people who want to make something, and the daily choice that decides which one you get Why he tells every aspiring writer to stop talking about the book they’re working on

If you’ve been waiting for more time, more proof, or more permission before you start the thing you keep circling, this one is likely to shorten the wait.

You can find Harlan at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript

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photo credit: Pip Crowley

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Episode Transcript:

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So the author, Harlan Coben, has something like 100 million books in print, and almost every one of them started the same way with something ordinary from his own life. And two words what if a hike he hated in the sticky new Jersey? He became the boy from the woods, a grandfather who vanished when Harlan was ten, a teamster boss fleeing an indictment became a career built on people who go missing. I spent 14 years asking people how they create, and very few pull the whole thing down out of the clouds like Harlan does. His new book, Plot Twist is part memoir, it’s part writing guide, part creative guide, and its message is simple you don’t need a big dramatic life to make something worth reading or watching or experience or creating. You’ve just got to pay attention to the one that you have. So we dig in. Why? Hope makes better suspense than murder. Why? He wrote three novels nobody published and didn’t hit the bestseller list until book number ten. Why boredom is a creative superpower and why your phone is kind of stealing it away from you. We talk about why you should never, ever talk about the book or the project that you’re writing while you’re in the middle of it, and why, if this dream still beats in your heart to do something creative, it is not too late. Not at 40, not at 50, not at 70 or 80. And also why this isn’t just about books. It’s about unlocking your creativity in any domain. But the moment that I really can’t stop thinking about it comes at the very end. When Harlan was just 27, his dad calls him from a hotel room in Tampa and says he’s not feeling well. And before the ambulance arrives, he kept repeating one thing, and by morning his dad was gone. And his last message to his son was, check my pockets. What Harlan found there, and what it taught him about just how the smallest detail can carry the biggest emotion. And the biggest story is where we’ll end today. So excited to share this conversation with you. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project. And we’ll jump right in after this short break.

[00:02:08] As we’re having this conversation. I’m in Boulder, Colorado. You’re in new Jersey. And we share a deep love of something hiking.

Harlan Coben: [00:02:18] Well, I don’t know about my hatred of hiking, as you know, has produced ideas for me. So I, I use everything, even things I don’t quite get. So.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:28] Absolutely. No, I love that. I remember reading that and I was just sitting there. I’m like, I’m a guy who voluntarily goes out into the woods for days, a week, for two hours. And it’s my favorite place. And like, and I see right through it, I hate hiking.

Harlan Coben: [00:02:43] I thought it’s a catchy way of opening up a chapter in the memoir. Right, right.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:46] Then 100%.

Harlan Coben: [00:02:47] My brother’s the same. He goes all over the world and does these exotic hikes, and he sends me all these videos and stuff like that. And I’m like, why, man? Why? But hey, to each his own. Teach his own.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:59] Like you just mentioned, though, you know, um, for you, as much as it’s not something where you look, you wake up and you pop out of bed and you’re like, oh, I can’t wait to hit the trails. Um, it’s been a really interesting source of creativity.

Harlan Coben: [00:03:12] Yeah. So in the case of this, I was hiking with my family once in the Ramapo Mountains of new Jersey. Okay, so it’s new Jersey, it’s boiling hot. It’s like July, August day and I’m whining. It’s a dirt trail. It’s this. The dirt is kicking up like a pig pen. It’s hot. I’m sweaty, I’m thirsty. I’m like, what are we doing out here? And there’s like a, oh, there’s a tree and oh, there’s another tree. Oh, look what’s up? Wow, a tree. And I’m getting bored and I’m whining like I’m whining to you right now. And then I see on a parallel path, a little boy walking. And I start asking myself, because this is what I do all day. And this is part of what I’m trying to teach people to sort of do not whine. That’s not the part. But I always am asking myself, what if I’m always trying to invent stories? And I’m like, well, what if that little boy just came out of the woods right now and said, I’ve always lived in the woods. I don’t remember any life before that or remember any parents. I kind of broke into cabins. It’s like a modern day Mowgli. And what if they still can’t figure it out? And what if 30 years pass and he still doesn’t know how he ended up in those woods? And as we start my book called The Boy from the woods and match the two that he’s in, he’s standing right across the street after getting one of those DNA tests across the street from his biological father. So here I took something that I was not enjoying, and I turned it into a story idea.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:31] That phrase, what if, um, take me deeper into this because it repeats a lot for you.

Harlan Coben: [00:04:39] Yeah. Sort of. I mean, part of what I want to do in plot twist is not just teach you to write. And I hope it does, and I hope it teaches you how to do story and all the things that I’ve spent my life doing. But more than that, I’m trying to instill in you maybe a little bit of the writer’s mind frame. So the writer’s mind frame people, you know, have terms I’m sure you’ve had on this show many times, terms like, you know, talking about meditation or mindfulness. It’s a very different version of that. It’s a much more active version. So when I see somebody in the street and I’ve taught my children this, I have four kids. And of course I say children, they’re all adults now. But what I taught them is every single person you see the richest man, the poorest man, the ugliest, the most beautiful, whatever. Every person has hopes and dreams. It’s such a simple thought when you’re walking down the street. Every person has hopes and dreams. And then the writer’s mind frame takes it a step further. Well, what are those hopes and dreams? Did they come true? Do they still dream that? Did they have like, packed up in somewhere stored in the back of their mind? Did the dream come true? And it was worse than they thought. Did it not come true? All of these things, I think it gives you empathy just as a human being, but as a storyteller, it’s a rich way of starting getting my day going, getting my brain active.

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:52] I mean, I love that, and I’m glad you brought up the idea of empathy, too, because as you’re describing that, I’m thinking, oh, this is a great way to just start to plant seeds of an idea. If you’re somebody who thinks you’re, if you’re book curious or just thinking about writing something, but you know, the empathy part of it, I think is really powerful too, you know, because you can literally walk down the street and we make so many assumptions about people, um, who they are, who they are and what’s going on for them, what’s not like, are they in a better place than us or worse place than us, you know, and the what if, you know, the what if thing, it changes that it puts you in a place of curiosity rather than assumption, which I think is a place that we all could use being more.

Harlan Coben: [00:06:29] I agree with you 100%. I mean, part of the reason I wrote this book is a lot of reasons, but we humans, as an expression that we humans are meant not just to consume, but to create. And even if you don’t create well or you don’t want to create, just trying or having the mind frame or understanding what makes somebody create. I don’t really like words like I thought the word art to be sort of hoity toity and a little pretentious. Oh, um, this is my art I’m building. I’m a storyteller. I’m creating and building stories and and things like that. But if you’re, you know, if your thing is writing music, if your thing is sculpting, painting, or even just inventing or being an entrepreneur, coming up with ideas for new drugs, whatever it is, it almost always starts with a what if and curiosity. I mean, I think, Jonathan, that’s the, the sort of key thing. Don’t you think like you’ve met a lot of successful people, you and I’ve met a lot of successful people. And one of the things I do notice that most people who seem to be on the right track is they sort of have childlike curiosity for what’s going on around them. Do you find that?

Jonathan Fields: [00:07:35] 100%. You know, as you’re describing that, um, as as, uh, Lindsey, who you’ve met, the executive producer on the show has reminded me that the, the guest I’ve often cited over 14 years of doing this. Milton Glaser, who was this iconic designer, you know, he’s designed I heart NY. He’s a co-founder of New York magazine and he’s since passed. But years ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with him. He was 86 years old, and he dropped a line that that I literally keep coming back to probably on a monthly basis. And what he said was certainty is a closing of the mind. Yeah. You know, and he looked at it and because we spend so much of our waking hours chasing this thing, certainty, quote, or security, however you want to define it, thinking that that is the endpoint, that is what we’re here to achieve. And he really flipped it around and said, you know, like the minute you’re there, there’s nothing left. So, so why bother?

Harlan Coben: [00:08:26] And I think it’s a state of nirvana, frankly, that we can’t reach. I think that’s actually part of of novel writing. So every novel that I start, I think I’m going to reach a certain height. I think it’s going. And it never does. It’s always just a little bit not quite there. Every TV show I do whatever it is. And so you try again. You know, you climb the next mountain if you ever would hit that. And people in their minds who maybe think this is it, it can’t get better or I know it all. A very, very dangerous as we know and be. That’s where you stop kind of moving. You know, I think it’s you have to it’s more an imaginary place. That spot that he’s talking about certainty is a very big danger, I agree.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:07] Yeah. It’s so interesting to hear you in particular say that, right? Because somebody might look at you from the outside and say, okay, so we’re talking about Harlan Coben here. Like the guy’s got something like 100 million books in print. He’s got, you know, like, uh, movie versions, um, TV versions of all these different things. And yet as we have this conversation, you’re saying like, every time I finish one of these things, there’s still a taste of discontent. And maybe that’s actually not a bad thing.

Harlan Coben: [00:09:36] Oh, it’s definitely not. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing. I mean, the harsher version of that calls it imposter syndrome or, you know, we all are very insecure as writers. We all think we suck. It’s a weird dichotomy because on the one hand, it’s a paradox, really. On the one hand, you’re saying, and I do this all the time, I suck. I’m terrible. No one’s ever going to read this. Well, at the same time, saying someone’s going to pick up this book or invest eight hours in the TV show or whatever, and they’re going to be better for it. And that seems like a complete contradiction, but it’s not. And while I’m writing, there’ll be moments I’m writing. Every day this happens and I’ll be sitting there going, oh my God, this book sucks. I used to be so good. What happened to me? When did I lose it? And then five minutes later, I’ll be, oh my God, this thing I’m writing is genius. And the old things? No good. That sort of insecurity, I think, comes with the territory. And I think when you stop that, that’s when you become maybe that that that creator that’s starting a little bit to phone it in. I think that that doubt is one of the things that, that fuels you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:44] Yeah, that definitely lands when you use words like, and you’re like, I think it sucks or, you know, you’re not succeeding at a particular thing. I wonder what the metric is, because part of what what I’ve seen you write about also and speak about is this notion that it’s not necessarily the, quote, craft the words on the page. There’s something else. There’s, there’s a, there’s a transformation. There’s a feeling that you want people to have, which is not just surprise. It’s not just twist. It’s not just like there’s something else and that you’re measuring like, have I showed up? Have I done what I came to do by.

Harlan Coben: [00:11:18] Yeah, I mean, I think, boy, uh, every time I’m trying to give you all the feels, it’s, you know, there’s an old joke by Selma Diamond. I think it was the actress who was on Night Court where she says, um, you know, what did you think? Yeah. What did you think of the case? And she said, I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me. Right. And that’s sort of what I want with every book. I mean, I think with a thriller or the ones that I have on TV or, or in book form, it’s not just enough to stir your mind or stir your pulse if it doesn’t stir your heart. I don’t think it works. It’s like having, you know, you have the most expensive car in the world, but if you don’t have gasoline in it or like charge up electricity, it’s not going any place. And so the heart and that emotion has to be there. So that’s the part of it that has to sort of separate from craft and become, you know, Frankenstein’s monster becomes alive on its own. My job is to entertain you and to let you escape for a while. I want to be the book or the TV show that you, you know, you start at 11:00 at night saying, I’m only going to read for 10 or 15 minutes. Next thing you know, it’s four in the morning and you’re cursing me out. I want to be that that book that you take on vacation to Saint-Tropez, but you don’t even want to leave your hotel room because you have to know how it’s going to. I love that feeling. And I think that feeling is healthy.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:40] So much of your writing I don’t want to get into this also is drawn from. Your life is drawn, you know, from your experiences, from your own stories. But until fairly recently, you would have thought that, you know, you would have said that your writing had kind of nothing to do with your life. What changed?

Harlan Coben: [00:12:58] I think that’s the revelation I recently came up with. When I started to decide I was going to write or teach these things, I always sort of jokingly would say, you know, what do I know about missing people or kidnappings or murders? I just, I just make it up. Which is also still true in the sense that I, you know, everybody thinks everything has to be researched or come from something actual. No, a lot of writing is your imagination sitting there making stuff up. That’s the greatest tradition of storytelling. And it should continue. But what I realized when I started to deep dive in and what I’m trying to do in Plot twist is really show people where I came up with the ideas, not just say, oh, you can cut ideas by what ifs, but very specifically how I came up with ideas. And I realized, well, every one of them almost involved my real life. Every one of them is something that happened. And then I asked, what if from the time of childhood until now. And so I couldn’t separate my life from the book. And that’s why Plot Twist is both a memoir and a writing guide. Because you, I, I, I literally cannot separate those anymore.

Jonathan Fields: [00:14:00] Let’s dive into one of those particular plots in your own life, plot twists in your own life that I feel like informs so many things. You’re, if I remember correctly, somewhere around ten years old, your grandfather who was close with you, who the whole family would go to on a weekly basis for dinner up and disappears one day. Just go. Gone. Um, for you, you have no idea how long because your parents are kind of like. Yeah, like telling you different stories. He’s in Europe. He’s in. Yeah. Um, some two years later, like this whole thing comes full circle. Take me into this story.

Harlan Coben: [00:14:39] Yeah. So when I grew up in new Jersey and my grandfather was president of a Teamsters Union liquor salesmen union after pro started after prohibition. So you probably can guess from that. And knowing some of the organized crime suits that my grandfather, as a ten year old, I didn’t kind of realize this, um, was somehow mob connected. Um, and suddenly our weekly dinners at the Golden China restaurant in West Orange, new Jersey stopped. And I was like, you know, where’s pops? And I kept asking and kept getting blown off. And I remember one day I found my mother. It was like he’d been gone for a while and just sort of sitting there by herself, smoking a cigarette, looking out. And she only smoked when she was stressed. And I’m like, what’s going on? Where’s pops? I’m ten years old, and my mother says, if anybody ever asks, you just say, he got sick when he was in Paris and decided to stay there. I’m like, what is that? He got sick. Is that why he’s gone? Just just, you know, say that I’m like, like somebody asked him like, who’s going to ask me? Because maybe one of your friends.

Harlan Coben: [00:15:40] I’m ten years old. What friend of mine is going to ask me where my grandfather is? Or, you know, maybe a policeman. Why would a policeman ask me? My grandfather is. And she brought out an article that had been in the paper recently saying, you know, a union boss indicted and he had been indicted for you know, they never caught them on the big stuff. He’d been indicted for illegal use of union funds, and he took off. And then like, we took a, like a family vacation to Canada without telling me. We just one day packed up and we went to Canada, turned around twice, went and finally got there. And that was the first time in a year and a half or so I had seen my grandfather. And then the end of the story is kind of boring because they changed the administrations. They dropped all the charges and he came back home. So yeah, that was one of those things that probably influenced what I do in some degree.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:32] Yeah. I mean, I in so much of what you write about is under the genre of thriller, and I don’t know whether you even categorize your writing as thriller, because I feel like it shifts around in interesting ways. But so often a story starts with a murder, with a death, you know, and then the whole thing is about it’s the whodunit or whydunit, right? So many of your stories start with somebody just gone missing. You have no idea. And I wonder if it ties back to your own personal stories like that or what happened with your grandfather.

Harlan Coben: [00:17:00] Well, I think it certainly does. Also, when I was sort of coming of age, I lost both my parents. My my parents were both dead by the time they were my age. My dad was 59. My mom was 61, died suddenly of a heart attack. And and one died slowly of cancer. I recommend neither, by the way, but a lot of it also starts with that wish. What if they were still here? What if they could meet their grandchildren the same way? It’s not unusual. We all sort of have this wish. I’ve used that wish in my novels. So if you write a story where somebody is murdered, that the person’s dead. So you may be solving a crime, you may be getting justice or retribution, but that person’s not coming back. But if somebody’s missing, you could be made entirely whole. And if you did by some chance watch, I will find you, for example, on Netflix. It’s a story of a man who’s in jail for the murder of his own son. If you just trying to prove he’s innocent. Well, we’ve seen that story before, okay? Big deal. I got it. But now he finds out his child may not have actually died that night. His child, who was three at the time, may be an eight year old now and absolutely can find him. That that’s much more powerful for me.

Harlan Coben: [00:18:07] That’s writing about hope. And when you write about hope, it just changes the stakes and makes them so high. A lot of creation. The best creation, when you think about it, is about hope. That idea that he could be not just prove he’s innocent. If he proves he’s innocent, it’s done. It’s done. Still dead. It’s a big deal. But if he can both prove he’s innocent. But the bigger question, is his son still alive? I think that’s the engine that got so many people to tune in on Netflix. I will find you. That’s so. That’s what I write about. I try to write about hope. It just adds stakes. I think it makes it more suspenseful and gives it more heart. And it’s what I am. It’s what interests me. All the people that I’ve lost in my life. I do have sort of the same way. We all do. It’s not unusual. I have fantasies about them still being alive. And so one of the things I’m trying to encourage in this book is to look at your own life, look at your own bio, your own memoir, and what is in there that’s important to you that you can now use to make story or make a paint or sculpt or invent. And that’s what I’m hoping plot twist will do for you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:09] Sat down with the wonderful children’s book author Kate DiCamillo a number of years back, and I remember this line. She said, you know, and she’s known for writing these, um, kids books where there’s, there’s really deep personal loss. And she said she learned early on, she said, when, when talking to kids in particular, always be honest. Don’t sugarcoat. Always be honest, but leave them with hope. Always leave them with hope. And that’s always stayed with me. And I think like when you can be brutally honest, if you also have this under like thread of hope that goes along with it.

Harlan Coben: [00:19:45] I agree 100% and hope, you know, hope is also suspenseful. I mean, hope is hope is great to write about. And one of the examples I give, which is a simple example that everybody remembers the first time you read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Do you remember how badly you wanted Charlie to find that golden ticket when he opened it? Oh yeah. And he didn’t. That’s hope, right? And that was suspense. You just kept turning pages because you so badly wanted Charlie to get that. So you’re combining realistic thing of hope, but also the sort of technical aspect of storytelling, suspense. And so those were those two married. That’s that’s that’s just beautiful stuff right there.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:23] Yeah, I love that. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. You’ve really interesting just personal journey into writing. You know you are not the kid who had five years old said, oh, I’m going to be a writer. I’m reading everything I can. I’m writing every day. I’m like journaling every day. You’re a basketball player. You were an athlete like you were the kid and you get into college. Um, by yours largely on a basketball scholarship. And don’t take writing classes in college and you end up, um, helping out in the family business, you know, in Costa del Sol in Spain, and something just clicks in your brain and says, I think I’m gonna write.

Harlan Coben: [00:21:08] Yeah, I think it’s great to have dreams and hopes, but you know, most people you talk to, and again, you’ve spoken to more people than I have. So you can back me up on this or disagree it this singular focus is great, but often it’s what you see in the periphery that sort of snags your vision and becomes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken to somebody who has become super successful or super wealthy, and you ask them sort of what they did or how they did it. And yeah, they might have been focused on something, but probably not what happened. And while they were going, they saw an opportunity on their just out of their peripheral vision. That’s kind of what happened to me where I, where I was in the Costa del Sol in Spain working for this travel company. I had never written really a word of fiction, but I always love story. I always loved thinking about story, creating stories in my own head, making stuff up in my own mind. And I thought, wow, I should just write like a little book about what this experience is. And once I started that, once I started down the road of writing, I realized, man, this is for me. As much as I love basketball or love the other things I was doing, there was nothing I felt as passionate about and wanted to do or realized. This is a part of me that I want to continue to explore like that. But it wasn’t like, again, didn’t realize it early. I didn’t see it young. I, I always find it, you know, you’re talking about before the sort of the precious artist writer who has to always say, oh, I always knew I’d be a writer when I was a four month old fetus, a pen formed in my hand, and I started to write sonatas in my mother’s womb, and when I was three years old.

Harlan Coben: [00:22:38] Children that gathered around me in the playground. Oh, stop that nonsense. That’s nonsense. Um, but sometime, a lot of times we say those things to be fair to the people. We say them because we don’t really know the answer. We don’t really know how we write a book or how we create any kind of art or how we build something. And so we say, what sounds good and sounds a little highfalutin, a little magical, and that’s not good. I don’t think for, for regular people who are regular, I say regular people, the people who have not yet experienced that yet, and hopefully will one day will. If I could just add one more thing to this, because it’s important. It’s important for whatever, you know, whatever people are out there. When I was young, I wanted to be a pro basketball player. That dream is over. I’m never going to be a pro basketball player. But if your dream is to be a writer or a painter or a sculptor, I don’t care how old you are. I don’t care what condition you’re in. That dream. As long as you don’t quit is still alive. Delia Owens, who wrote When the Crawdads Sings, was 70 when that book came out. This year. People are talking about Theo of Golden by Alan Levi. He’s 70. I know writers who first started 75 or 80. So if this is a dream that beats in your heart, just know you only fail when you quit. So there’s a little pep talk, I guess part of the of the question there.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:48] Yeah. Um, I love this notion of sort of paying attention to what’s in your peripheral vision also. You know, you’re allowing yourself to just scan the horizon and play with things as they come up and ask yourself like, yeah, like, not just what if I’m really good at this one job that I’m here to do, but what if this thing that is popping up on the side, what if that’s something and you’re like, you gave yourself the gift of saying, I don’t know if it is or it isn’t, but I’m going to play with it. Like I’m going to spend a little bit of time writing and just follow the thread, which I feel like so many of us don’t allow ourselves to do.

Harlan Coben: [00:24:21] Yeah, I do think play is important. Leisure is important. I mean, you know, in a sense, like I write a lot by hand and I think something childlike and freeing and almost like if, if, if your writing life is a day at school, your little notebook and handwriting is the sandbox at recess, where you can just kind of create and destroy and knock over and and try again. That’s important not to be. You know, I’m, I’m older than certainly most of your of your listeners and not to be one of those in my day, but I think this is the problem and why you have to make sure you really stay as much as you can off the internet. When I was young, like if I, when I was in Spain that summer, if I had had my phone with me and I could have scrolled through, you know, when I was part of it was I was bored out of my mind. I was in Spain. They have like two stations that work there that are both in Spanish. I don’t really speak great Spanish. I didn’t really know anybody there. I did, I worked with my clients, I read a ton, but there’s only so many hours you can fill in the day.

Harlan Coben: [00:25:21] Now, today, I think I would have probably taken out my phone and scrolled like I do now. Like I’m not putting myself above this. Don’t give your mind. Time to just wander. Time to get bored. Time to make up stories in your own head. We don’t really have leisure time to think about it. We use our leisure time to scroll. You have to fight for your time to just sit alone and and be creative and man, that we all know it’s good for us, right? We all know if we put our phones away and we read a book, a novel especially I’m slightly biased for before we go to bed at night, we know we’re happier. We know it’s good for us. We know we’re less depressed. There’s been brainwave studies done by the Queen’s Reading Room in England that absolutely proves it’s scientifically, that reading a book with print is better for us and will improve our our our mind. It will improve our mental health. It will make us less depressed. We know this scientifically and we all know it intuitively, and yet it’s hard to make ourselves do it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:20] Yeah, and I’m raising my hand right alongside you. I think we’re all just we’re so locked into this pattern of the minute. There’s, you know, a little bit of downtime. Where’s my device? Like, where’s the thing that I can scroll? It also brings up this notion that there is a very, very direct connection between boredom and creativity. Which sounds like it would be the opposite. But it’s often, you know, like that’s where the magic happens when you talk about the process of writing. You argue that there are these sort of like three elements, three macro elements, one of them that really nobody likes to talk about. But you also probably argue it’s it’s the most important desperation.

Harlan Coben: [00:26:56] Yeah, yeah. Well, desperation is the fact that, you know, if you don’t have to do it, you won’t do it. I mean, it’s just you have to do it. You have to want to tell a story. You know, there’s a it’s desperation. I mean, I’m not fit anymore to do anything else, like hold a real job. I have no other marketable skills. I’m disorganized. I’m forgetful. My assistant. You know, when I’m doing a podcast like yours, my assistant has to call me ten minutes beforehand like a child saying, I’m just set your alarm. Do you remember? You have to do this? Yeah, it’s going to be on video. Wear a shirt. You know, the whole thing that I’m. Because I’m not good at anything else. And so that desperation, the fact that I can’t do anything else leads me to do that. But part of being a writer is you have to want it badly. Like you, there’s always a voice in my head that says I should be writing even when I’m driving at kids in carpool, when I’m doing something I enjoy. There’s always a little voice that says, hmm, maybe. Maybe you should be home and writing, and that’s just something you live with. It doesn’t. It sounds really weird. It’s really kind of not. But it’s just. And I enjoy it. I mean, I welcome it. I am a writer and this is my world I fight for. Time to write. You have to fight for time to write. I live my life under the credo, which I talk about in the book of does it help me produce pages? Good. It doesn’t help me produce pages bad.

Harlan Coben: [00:28:13] And, um, yeah, so I think that’s those are sort of useful things to just think about if you want to. And again, I use it for writing in this book, but it could be painting, sculpting, and it could be whatever entrepreneur idea that you have, whatever business that you’re creating, there’s a certain obsession that’s good for you, I think, in these things. So when I say obsessive, I think it’s important that I don’t mean something that feels like a sacrifice. So I’ve spent the majority of my life, my days alone in a room, and I’ve not regretted one of them. Mm. Think about that for a second. Like, I’ve spent most of my days alone in a room, and I’ve not regretted any of them. It’s life balance in a certain sort of way. So I’ve made writing part of my life balance. Now, I really have two things, mostly in my life, and that’s my family and my writing. I’m not I’m not very, you know, I’m not a very diverse guy. I’m not a Renaissance man. I don’t like to collect things. I don’t get hobbies, I don’t hike. As you as you pointed out earlier. But so if I’m if you know, if things are great with my with my partner, spouse, if things are great with my kids, if things are, I’m eating right. I’m exercising all of those things. I have good relations with my friends, all those things that I need to keep in balance. If I’m not writing well, those things are going to get out of balance and vice versa.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:32] Interesting.

Harlan Coben: [00:29:33] And so I it almost encourages me in a positive way. I stress I find this a positive. It’s like when we’re on vacation as a family and I have four kids and we go on vacation as a family. I wake up usually an hour or two before everybody else, which is when my kids were teenagers, was not a problem. It meant waking up at 11 a.m.. But, um, and I write a little bit and I don’t write because I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m obsessive or because I’m a workaholic. No, I write because that’s part of my life balance. And after I write, I can now be more free to be with my children and my family and do things. So I’ve made it part of my life balance. At the same time, it works the other way too. If the other things are all going out of whack. I’m not writing well. I normally will not write well. There’s a quote from Flaubert where he says something very something somewhat similar be, um, be orderly and normal in your real life, like bourgeois, so you can be violent and original in your work. And so I need that. I need that sort of space in order to create. I need that sort of peace of mind. Mhm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:39] I mean, it brings up another interesting question, which is oftentimes when we are thinking about stepping into some significant creative pursuit or maybe just allocating a part of our life, you know, and again, like you said, maybe it’s writing, maybe it’s painting, maybe it’s sculpting, maybe it’s whatever it may be, right? Um, we feel like we need, we need the raw material. We need to have lived hard. We need to have suffered. We need to have, there have to be big, momentous things for us to, to either tell the stories about or paint about or give us the, the level and depth of awakening or suffering to, quote, go there and create something worth being experienced by somebody else. So much of what you write about, it’s everyday life. You know, it’s it’s, it’s not the, the big Titan, it’s you, which feels like an invitation to me for anyone to kind of say like, you don’t need all that. You just have to pay attention.

Harlan Coben: [00:31:41] I think, I mean, I, I agree with that’s my theory then. Yeah. Look, it sounds very romantic. And there has been this sort of quotes that the happy childhood is not worth living or, you know, you have to have suffered for your art or any of that. Um, and I actually just mentioned that how, you know, the influence that my own life tragedies have had on me, but every life has tragedies and every life has stumbling blocks and small stories make big stories. Um, you know, I read a bit about my mom and her and her death in this book and just how somebody seemingly so ordinary is inspired so much of what I do. And so that’s, that’s, I think hugely important. There’s no, you know, there’s no reason. It’s more about your desire and, and, and getting rid of the excuses. Um, it’s more about, you know, we look, we all fear that we suck. I mentioned this before. We all right. With fear. Fear can do one of two things to you. It can. What happens to 90% of people paralyze you? I suck, I’m afraid to put my pen to paper. I’m not going to even write one word. Which is. Most of you that are listening right now or or fear can fuel you. Screw that. I’m going to show fear. I’m going to dive right into that fear, and I’m going to write, and I’m going to show it that I don’t care what it says. I’ll prove it in the next round. And that’s usually a difference between somebody who is successfully producing pages or canvases or whatever, and those who think about it, but don’t quite make the step there.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:08] Yeah. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So if we take a step back in time, then you come back from the Costa del Sol, you’re into writing your first novel, kind of figuring out like in the beginning, you’ve never done this before, I guess. Was this a summer break? So yeah, because you’re back in Amherst after that, right?

Harlan Coben: [00:33:31] Between my junior and senior year. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:33] Right. So this is something you’ve never done before. Nobody knows you. You know, like as as you know, Harlan Coben, the novelist or the aspiring writer. You drop back into your friends. I’m sure you’re questioning yourself at this point. It’s early on. You haven’t actually shown that you can do this thing yet. Um, in the very, very early days, how do you keep working? How do you just keep going when I’ve got to imagine that voice is in your head too?

Harlan Coben: [00:34:00] I just found my thing. I can’t describe it better than that. I knew this was like, I shouldn’t say new because a lot of life is also fate. We all know that too. I could have gone another way and never been a successful writer. I almost went to University of Chicago Law School between. After my senior year I graduated. I hadn’t accepted to University of Chicago Law School, and I was going to go out there and if I’d done that, chances are very good chances I would not be sitting here talking with you today. I’d be preparing a legal brief or something like that. So life is a lot about sliding doors and fate. And when people pretend it’s not, that’s also unfair to people that I wasn’t destined or couldn’t have gone any other way. But that said, I really found the passion in this, and I had a really interesting and good attitude about it, and I don’t exactly know why I did, because I didn’t have a very good attitude about a lot of other things. But first of all, for some reason, you know, I wrote three novels that were remained unpublished before my first was was published. And when I was 26, I got my first novel published, but I wrote three complete novels. And there’s a couple of things that are important about about that. One is I understood that there’s no reason why I should think I should be great at it right away. I could have the basketball skills of LeBron James if I step on the basketball court and I’ve never played basketball before, I’m gonna suck. Why would novel writing be different? We writers have this sort of joke where we say, we go to a party and we meet an eye surgeon and the eye surgeon goes, oh, you’re a writer.

Harlan Coben: [00:35:28] I’m thinking of writing a book. And we say, oh, you’re an eye surgeon. I’m thinking of doing eye surgery. Now, it’s a little facetious because we know we can. All right. We can’t all do eye surgery. But there is something to that. There’s no reason everybody today thinks you should be good right away. My first New York Times best seller was my 10th. I say it again 10th published novel, if you count the three I wrote before it. It’s my 13th novel that I wrote was my first New York Times best seller list. It wasn’t an overnight success, but I loved it. Two couple of things. One thing is I loved it. Two is back in those days again, we didn’t have the internet, so I didn’t know really what a pimple on the ass of publishing I was. I thought I was doing great. Now today I would look up Amazon, I’d see I’m ranked number 3,287,000 and say, oh, I’m going to give this up because I stink. But I didn’t know that I was happily naive. So maybe be a little bit happily naive and just keep doing it. I don’t know, I kind of also saw no point in giving up. As I said before, you only fail when you quit. Why, if I liked it and thought I had a chance to get better at it and be good at it, would I quit? I, I, I get it, but I don’t get it. It’s one of the reasons I always tell writers something that sounds wrong.

Harlan Coben: [00:36:35] Like a lot of people say, tell people what your goal is, and that way you have to sort of do it. But if you’re writing a book, I never talk about the book I’m writing now, and I tell writers who are trying never talk about the book you’re writing now. And the reason is you get some sense of satisfaction, like, I’m dying right now, Jonathan, to tell you about the story I’m telling now. But as I start to tell you, okay, the guy goes, I can almost feel like the balloons going in the air is coming out of it. I’m dying to tell you what the story is about. The only way I’ll give myself that satisfaction is to write the whole book. And have you read it? I can’t tell you how many people have contacted me. And how many people right now are listening to us who are saying, I’m a writer. I, you know, have you have you? I’m a novelist. I’m writing a novel. Have you finished it? No. That’s like saying I’m a marathon runner, but I’ve never run more than 2 or 3 miles. I ran five once. No I didn’t. I bought a hydration belt and new sneakers and I plan on running next week. No, I wrote three failed novels. They were not failures because I actually completed them my first time out. I completed an entire novel. That’s an accomplishment. That’s a start. So that’s the other thing. Don’t talk about it so much. Just do it. If you enjoy it. And when it happens, then it will happen. Mm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:37:51] I love that. Um, I feel like it also it’s an interesting, you know, you talk about this other thing. I think you describe it as if tell me if I’m getting the language right. Incremental ambition.

Harlan Coben: [00:38:01] Yes. Incremental.

Jonathan Fields: [00:38:02] And this is kind of like speaking to that to a certain extent.

Harlan Coben: [00:38:05] Yeah. I think I think again, in today’s world, it’s so hard to have incremental ambition because everybody’s looking online and I think so much of our society. Again, I’m wondering about the about social media, but it’s now resentment and believing people have these terrific lives and getting angry about it, which wasn’t the case when I was when I was younger. My first goal when I first started to write in the Costa del Sol in Spain. This is in the days before self-publishing and things like that, where it was only, you know, publishers that had to accept you, whatever you want to call them nowadays, traditional publishing. Um, my goal was to have somebody publish me, you know, a real publisher, quote unquote. I put the quote in real back in those days and walk past one bookstore and see my book there. I don’t care if it’s sold. I just want to say I was a novelist. And once I achieved that goal, it was like, okay, two books just because I want to show that it wasn’t a fluke. So I got the second book and I enjoyed each step of the way, and I loved it.

Harlan Coben: [00:39:01] Okay, if I can make a little bit of a living so I don’t have an embarrassing right now. I was making embarrassingly small, um, money on it, you know, small advances. If I could just get. So it’s not embarrassing. Okay. If I could just hit number 15 on a list of one through 15 in New York Times list just for an hour. And I enjoyed each time I achieved that goal while looking for the next one. And so I always found something. Nowadays I will get an email from somebody because I just wrote my first book. I self published it. How come I’m not selling like James Patterson yet? You know, like these unrealistic goals now enjoy every moment of it. I’m so happy the way I ended up coming up step by step and slowly would I, would I, you know, if I had gotten the success earlier, probably would not have been as sweet as it is now. So just go through your own pace. Everybody’s got their own journey on that.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:48] Yeah, I love this idea of just like one little step at a time. And also it feels like it, it takes the pressure off like, hey, I’m not going to like, I’m writing my first ever novel. And I’m quite sure like my, my only goal here is to be a number one New York Times best seller and selling makeup. It’s like, right, that that’s the thing that’s going to make you never write past page 1 or 2.

Harlan Coben: [00:40:09] It’ll, it will paralyze you and also celebrate and not just celebrate. Celebrate your friends achievements. I love doing that. Like anytime any of my friends have anything good going on, I love to celebrate it. And it’s just, it’s, you know, it’s just fun and good and nothing bad comes from it. No one has to fail so that I can succeed is one of my writing mottos that we’ve been going through for years and years in the writing world. And, um, yeah, a lot of, lot of my close friends are writers because of that. And so that I just think that’s a, it’s a healthier way to live anyway, even if you fail, quote unquote, and not don’t get published or you don’t have the career you want. It’s still good for you. It’s still enjoyable. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:49] You, you’ve brought up your mom a number of times, um, who you write about. Uh, Corky sounds like everyone called her Corky. Including you. Yeah. Um, tell me more.

Harlan Coben: [00:41:01] Well, she was a very early feminist, so in the 70s, we had a bumper sticker on our car that said women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition. And, you know, we had all those women in the House and Senate t shirts and bumper stickers, and she and a friend actually sold them. She marched with Gloria Steinem. Um, and did all those things. She was wacky and kooky, and she was the first, uh, female umpire in Little League as soon as Little League became co-ed and she realized no one had had wasn’t any female umpires yet. My mother, who would never who would always take on a controversy rather than ducking it, ended up doing that. And the only problem was she was a terrible umpire because she couldn’t see. Um, and so that was sort of her, her thing. She was, you know, uh, and she was just great. She was, you know, um, some people think because my parents died fairly young, that I have raised them to some sort of artificial sainthood or fictional sainthood. I don’t think so. I have a pretty good idea of who they were and what they were. And, um, they were pretty magical. It’s one of the things I like to write about because to many, when I wrote Myron Bolitar series, for example, too many detective series have the detective has a terrible relationship with their parents or their parents abuse them or they have. Or absent, which is better, I guess, in terms of drama. But I gave Myron two wonderful parents and he lives in their basement. When he first starts out, as I did up until the age of 27.

Harlan Coben: [00:42:23] I’m where my dad died. I was living in the basement of my childhood home. And so I thought that would be interesting to reflect because a lot of us do have did have wonderful parents or parents that we understand now were trying their best. Doesn’t mean they always got it right. My mom made a lot of mistakes. She used to, for example, because she was so flighty, she would just drop me off at the Orthodontist’s office on days I didn’t have an appointment and drive off, so the orthodontist would have to see me that day. Like I would come in, be like, you know, ten years old or whatever, 11 years old. You’re like, what are you doing here today on an appointment? I’m like, oh, my mom dropped me like, and she would drop be gone and we’d have phones back then. Right? So, you know, it’s a lot of interesting kind of stuff, but I think all that mixes into your life and each, each of you has this, each of you has this. And that’s what I kind of hope the book will teach is like to look at your own life and figure out where those things are that you can then change around and make into stories. So I gave Myron Bolitar my parents. In fiction, my parents get to live. They’ve gotten to age and Myron has had the relationship with his parents that I wish I could have had had they survived. So that’s also part of writing. It’s wish fulfillment.

Jonathan Fields: [00:43:30] You also really, towards the end of the book, you write about your dad. And as you mentioned, both your parents passed fairly young, your dad at only 59. Um, your mom in a much more drawn out way, um, with cancer, but your dad in the blink of an eye in a profoundly different way that really rattled you differently.

Harlan Coben: [00:43:52] Well, it’s also the first, the first cut is the deepest. So it was sort of like there was a, I think all lives realized that we have a fragile bubble around it, you know, and we go, you know, happily not paying attention to that. And that just shattered everything. That was the, the move that told me nothing’s off the table in life that’s good or bad or whatever else, that things could just change in a snap. I dropped them off at the airport that morning and it probably ran to his plane, which I still. Part of me doesn’t forgive me for if I had just maybe left ten minutes earlier, that wasn’t my timing or anything. You know, you just start asking yourself all those kind of what if questions. And it was so it was the first cut. It was just devastating. And he was I know, I again, I raise him to sainthood, but when I became a father, I sort of tried to study how he did it. Like, almost like I was an apprentice studying the master magician. How did he teach his children to, you know, excel and succeed without pushing, you know, how did he do all those kind of things? And so yeah, he was, uh, I think about him all the time. Still to this day, I think about my parents quite often, and I think I get a lot of that out, you know, part of part of it, sorry, guys, is my, uh, is my therapy when I write these books, but I hope it makes some better books.

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:03] Yeah.

Harlan Coben: [00:45:04] And better shows. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:06] I hope there’s a moment when you’re, when you tell that story in the book, um, were there something so innocuous that is just so powerful? Um, and it revolves around a simple room key for a hotel.

Harlan Coben: [00:45:19] So when my father called the, um, he called us. So I dropped my father off at the airport and I went back to work, and he flew down to Tampa, and he called from his hotel room in Tampa. He called my mom and I was in the room and he said, I’m not feeling well, which my father, of course, was one of those guys from that generation. They never didn’t feel well or tell you. And I remember calling him back saying, you know, I went, I called the front desk, they’re going to send an ambulance up. And he said, the scariest word I ever heard him say, which was okay. He didn’t say, no, I don’t need it. I’m fine. So I knew it was bad. And he said, but before they get here, I got to find the key. What are you talking about? I got to find the key to the room. I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta find the key to the room. Before I get there. I gotta find the key to the room. He keeps saying this over and over. Meanwhile, my mom and I fly down. We try. We get down to, um. To make a long story short, we get down to Tampa.

Harlan Coben: [00:46:05] Um, and he dies around 3 or 4 in the morning on the table. And we, I get his stuff, we go back home and it’s just so angry. The whole world and everybody. I remember calling his doctor and saying, did you tell him we were coming down because you didn’t let me talk to him on the phone? Did you tell him? He says, yeah, I told him, you’re coming down. I don’t believe you. I said, what did he say to tell you? Said to tell you to check his pockets. And I said, what? Because to check his pockets. Like, are you trying to tell me? My dad’s last words were, tell my son to check my pockets? And he says, yeah. So I went to his stuff and I got his pants out and I checked his pocket in there in his pocket was his hotel key. He wanted us to have a place to stay that night. He figured we’d need a place to stay. So his last thoughts, his last worry, was to find the hotel keys so that his family would have a place to stay that night. Mm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:46:53] Says so much, says so much about him as a man. And the story you just told in that little moment also says so much just about the small things.

Harlan Coben: [00:47:02] Well, that’s.

Jonathan Fields: [00:47:03] Exactly the lives that are the big things.

Harlan Coben: [00:47:04] Yeah. It’s and it’s and that’s, and that’s part of storytelling, Jonathan is, you know, like it’s the key, right? I mean, I could tell you a story about my father dying, but you probably won’t remember that story as much as you remember the hotel key, you’ll see the hotel key. And that’s why sometimes your gaze has to be really narrow in order to make your story bigger.

Jonathan Fields: [00:47:23] Yeah. Beautiful. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Harlan Coben: [00:47:31] Oh, I think that that balance thing that I was talking about, here’s the thing I remember about first and foremost, I have for like unbelievable kids. I just every day wonder what my wife and I did right to have these. It’s just like, they’re just, you know, we all have blinders with them. And so everything always revolves around family. And that’s probably the reason why all my stories that some way do also, that’s what we all. And that’s the thing we all have in common. There’s nothing special about that kind of put special in quotes because it’s all special. You know, it’s not the one piece of advice I’ll tell you is it’s yeah. On the one hand, Raymond, Raymond Bradbury put it like, live, just live your life like you only have ten minutes left. What would you do? That’s both okay, but it’s mostly nonsense. Life is lived in the moments that are quieter, moments that are with your family, moments with people you care about, and the quiet moments if you’re always trying to seek that next high. If you’re always trying to live like you’re going to die tomorrow, you’re not going to live a very happy life. So I’m going to tell you to go against that routine. Yes. Have experiences. Yes. All the things we talked about. But really understand that life is lived in the moments between them. And those are the moments of real of true poignancy and joy. And I hope that you find that in them.

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:46] Thank you.

Harlan Coben: [00:48:47] Thank you Jonathan.

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:48] So let’s talk about some of today’s big takeaways from the conversation. One thing I keep thinking about is it’s that hotel key, right? Harlan could have told us his his dad passed in a hotel room at three in the morning, and we’d have nodded and felt really bad and offered condolences and moved on. Instead, he told us about a man too sick to stand worrying about where his wife and son would sleep that night. That’s the whole craft in one image. It’s also the whole argument, because the invitation here is to look at your own life, your own bio, the actual one, and ask what if not the dramatic parts, the ordinary day to day parts? Is there something deeper in there? A story that wants to emerge? There’s also this term, incremental ambition, that Harlan shared his first goal. It wasn’t, you know, a bestseller list. It was to walk past one bookstore and see the book on a shelf. Ten published novels later. He never gave up. The list finally showed up and kept showing up. And fear does one of two things to you. It paralyzes you, which is what happens to most people. Or it fuels you. That’s not personality. That’s a choice that we can make on any given day. How do we want it to land? What will we do with the energy of it? So here’s maybe one thing to think about today.

Jonathan Fields: [00:50:06] Maybe actually do this week. Pick one ordinary moment from your own life. Something small enough. You never even told anyone about it and ask, what if. Is there a story? Is there a creative juice in here and see where it goes? That’s a simple practice. The whole thing right there. And hey, before you go, do me a quick favor. Seven-second favor. Think of one person in your life who’s been maybe talking about a thing that they want to make and send them this episode, especially if it’s a writer. But it doesn’t have to be. And while you’re at it, go ahead and leave us a review. Wherever you get your podcast, it helps us get discovered and brings more people into these conversations. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help By, Troy Young, and Alejandro Ramirez. Kris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven’t already, please go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a conversation. Until next time. I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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