What if the most important thing you ever do as a writer is something nobody else ever sees? Josh Malerman has 33 rough drafts sitting in a crate behind his desk. Nine are out in the world. The rest — finished novels, written and set aside — are what he considers the real work. Not the Netflix deal. Not the New York Times list. The crate.
Josh Malerman is the author of Bird Box, Mallory, Goblin, Unburied Carol, and dozens more. His breakthrough novel was adapted into a Netflix feature starring Sandra Bullock, and he's racked up Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award nominations along the way. He's also one half of the songwriting duo behind Detroit rock band The High Strung, whose song The Luck You Got serves as the theme for Showtime's Shameless.
In this conversation — originally recorded for Dan's earlier show and still one of the most resonant interviews in his nine years of podcasting — Josh talks about what it actually means to be an artist, why finishing is everything, how he wrote Bird Box in 26 days and Unburied Carol in 15, and why your body of work represents you far better than any single book ever could.
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📚 About Josh Malerman
Josh Malerman is a New York Times bestselling horror author best known for Bird Box, which was adapted into a Netflix feature film starring Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich. He's written over 30 novels — nine of which are out in the world — spanning cosmic dread, psychological horror, and deeply strange fiction that resists easy genre classification. His work has been nominated for the Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and James Herbert Awards. He's also a working musician: one half of the songwriting duo behind Detroit rock band The High Strung, whose music appears in Shameless. He writes prolifically, finishes everything, and keeps the rest in a crate.
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