There’s one thing he knows for sure: once his legal thriller is published and the royalties are pouring in, his life is going to significantly improve. Wasn’t Turow able to cut way back on his hours? And didn’t Grisham quit the practice altogether? When his legal thriller is published, he won’t be settling for anything less.
He imagines the shock his clients will feel the day he’s finally able to tell them all to go to hell. Yes, things are going to be very good indeed. Didn’t he always say he was destined for greatness? It’s something he’s known since he was eight or nine, when he wrote it on a scrap of paper that has since been preserved by his mother in a frame hanging over her kitchen window: “Someday, I’m going to be really, really famous.”
Yesterday, he indulged himself in a little daydreaming about how his photograph will look on the book’s back cover. Should he smile? Or should he adopt the ponderous, knowing gaze of the serious author? He thinks the latter, unless it means he’ll need to grow a goatee, which his wife ruled out two weeks ago.
A remaining question is how long it’s going to take him to finish the book. He doesn’t like to think about this question, because it always makes him think about another: How should he start it? Frankly, that’s the question that’s really got him stumped. There’s going to be a lawyer character, of course, and the lawyer may as well be sleeping with his secretary. But what happens next? He’s not precisely sure.
It’s a mystery, all right. But it’s nothing that a bottle of whiskey and a couple of writing guides can’t solve. After all, with success just around the corner, how can he go wrong?
[Like this post? It's one of many included in my book How to Feed a Lawyer (And Other Irreverent Oberservations from the Legal Underground). Details here.]
Related Posts:
1. Advice to Young Lawyers #4 (How to Write a Legal Thriller)
2. Advice to Clients of Lawyers #1 (A Lack of Imagination)
3. Advice to Young Lawyers #21 ("I love literature of all kinds")
4. Types of Lawyers #9: The Lawyer on the Run
5. The "Types of Lawyers" Category--all "types of lawyers" posts
Originally published 12/7/04.
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