Staying Fit
Photo Illustration: MOA; (Source: Allen Jones)
Best-selling author David Baldacci, 63, has penned another thriller in his popular “6:20 Man” (a.k.a. Travis Devine) series. In The Edge, Devine is hired to solve a CIA operative’s murder and recover classified information before it falls into the wrong hands and compromises national security. Baldacci shares how he finds his writing inspiration, who he’s reading these days and how he loves to spend his time off.
You’ve written more than 60 books. Do you still enjoy the process, and has it gotten any easier?
I enjoy it just as much as I’ve always enjoyed it, which is a good sign. I don’t think it gets easier. I think it gets harder. And it probably should, because the more books you write, you realize how good a book can be if you just try a little harder — if you work a little bit harder on the plot, develop the characters better, work on the prose better. You know the potential that’s there with each book, and so you work a little bit harder. When I was first starting out, my first book [Absolute Power] was turned into a movie, and [Academy award–winning screenwriter] William Goldman wrote the screenplay, and he gave me some really great advice. He said, “The moment you think you know you’ve figured out what it is to be a writer, you’ve lost the edge.” It actually allows you to be a good writer — it’s that sense of wonderment that you have no idea what the hell you’re doing. You just jump in the boat and see what happens. … I’ve always found that fear is a great antidote to complacency.
In Baldacci’s latest thriller, the “6:20 Man” is tasked with solving the murder of a CIA agent.
Grand Central Publishing
Where do you get the inspiration for your stories?
I’ve always been very curious about the world. I like to see what makes people tick, what makes the world tick. So I get up out of bed every day and I walk out the door and I just see what’s out there. I observe, I listen, and I think about things. And I write about things that fascinate me, that make me curious. I write books to answer questions that I have in real life about certain things. I try to answer them in a fictional sense. So that’s really where the stories come from — it’s just that curiosity that’s driven me my entire life.
What was the first book you ever read and loved?
It was The Magic Squirrel. It’s a Russian parable. I read it when I was like 6. And that was the first moment where I actually ached — painfully ached — when I was away from a book. All I wanted to do was get back to it, keep reading. I think that was the book that really inspired my lifelong love of reading and my just wonderment of books. And it led to me becoming a writer sometime later. I actually went back and bought that book — first edition — online many years ago, and I have it at my home. I pick it up every now and then because I’m a very nostalgic person. It just brings back memories, good memories.
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