Live in the Process, Not for the Result

Hello and welcome to the StoryGrid masterwork experiment. Before we get started today, I want to remind listeners about StoryGrid LIVE. Happening September 13th and 14th, 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee, StoryGrid has grown into a movement followed by tens of thousands of writers from all over the globe who are serious about their craft. This live in person weekend event will be full of information, inspiration and expertise, along with some food, fun and nerdery with your fellow story gritters. StoryGrid Live is the place to be for writers looking to deepen and grow their expertise in the craft of storytelling. Step out of your routine to spend two days alongside other writers and storytellers like you. This is a chance not only to learn, but to connect with other amazing writers. Sean Coyne and Tim Grohl will be presenting along with special guest Steven Pressfield. I'll be there and I hope you will too. Find out more@storygrid.com live. That's storygrid.com live. Now on with our regular introduction. My name is Ann Hawley and I'm an experienced novelist trying to ground my craft more solidly in story grid methodology. And it's working. So I've agreed to be the lab rat in the Masterwork Experiment, which Sean Coyne is conducting as a test of his latest writing and editing methods. In the Masterwork Experiment, Sean and I have analyzed Annie Proulx novella Brokeback Mountain down to the beat level, and I've taken on the challenge of constructing a new story using the same beats but set in the England of Jane Austen, Lord Byron and Beau Brummell. Last week I established a new point of view narrative device and it gave me the momentum I needed to really get writing. This week I turned in a new prologue as well as several new scenes, including that all important first intimate contact moment that's required of every courtship love story. But my story is running long already and I don't think I can bring it in at anywhere near Annie Proulx elegant distilled 11,500 wor Sean's response to this conundrum is an inspiring discussion about the importance to a writer of living in the process and not living for the outcome. Also, there's some talk of hobo signs, so put on your white coat and safety goggles and step into the laboratory for episode nine of the Masterwork Experiment.

I just saw your request to edit, so I just granted you editing or at least commenting on the document and I just now saw it. So I'm sorry I didn't get to that.

Oh that's okay. It was just praise. So you can live without that, right?

Well, I could, yeah.

Oh God. I gotta tell you, this has been.

The most interesting process, Sean.

I just, I am learning so much about what it means to write something. I tell you, I've had a number of people comment. I've, I've, I've gotten some nice feedback from, from people who have taken the time to email me about the podcast. And one of the things that people have said is, I've mentioned, you know.

That what I'm turning in is really rough.

And they go, hahaha, really rough.

It's beautiful. Which is nice to hear.

But what they're talking about is my.

Line writing is good.

I have spent 57 years honing the language.

Right, right.

And the roughness is not in the line by line prose.

The roughness is in the story structure.

And the difference in perception about that.

Is just amazing to me.

I have never full.

Even with four years of working with.

Storygrid, I have never quite gotten it into, like into my body.

Right.

That the difference between being inspired and turning out beautiful, pretty sentences and what.

A rough draft, first draft really is.

It's like shoveling sand into the sandbox. There's just, I mean it's just a, it's just a big box full of sand. I haven't done anything with it yet.

Well, yeah, I mean, I have to, I have to say that I don't want to jinx us, but in terms of an experiment to get this sort of early response, you know, I just find myself reading your work and even though I know where it's going, because we've so fully delineated all these beats, the discovery of your, like that 57 years was not for. Not. You know what I'm saying?

God, I hope not.

No, no, absolutely not. And that was one of the reasons that attracted me to you, was in just the facility that you have understanding what your voice is really all about. You have a specific writing voice that you developed over that time that is an automatic for you. What you've been struggling with is the difficult place people associate with structure, function, and, you know, just organizational stuff that make up stories. Because what I was taught, and I think probably what you were taught as I was matriculating through various levels of school, was that writers write. And the more you write, the closer you will get to an epiphany and those epiphanies will add up over time such that the structural, functional organization of a story will become uniquely yours as opposed to the idea that, like a. Like a chair, there is a structural, functional organization to stories, too, and it can be learned through craft and then applied to everyone's particular genius. So this notion that you sort of have to make it through this passage until you are touched by a mystical greatness that gives you these tools intuitively, as opposed to learning something explicitly, has been deeply ingrained in, I think everyone who's ever taken an English class in their life.

It certainly was ingrained in me. Yeah.

And it's a difficult thing. Like, you're a very intelligent person, so intellectually you could grasp. You know what, Maybe that is BS And I'm willing to change my attitude and to sort of explore this story, grid methodology, structural stuff, and see if it's useful to me. And so over a period of four years, you're like, yeah, yeah, this is working. Yeah. I'm not fully buying everything, but I'm going to keep going. We'll see, we'll see, we'll see. And I think the experiment has actually made you procedurally demonstrate this new understanding very, very specifically. So each of these beats that you analyzed yourself and you formalized yourself. And I will remind you and everyone else listening that all of the beats that you're following were the beats that you determined, not what I determined. Right. Which I think was really important. And that was something that came organically through this process, because I initially believe, like, oh, I will be the professor, and I will show her the beats, and then she will execute as exactly as I say. Right. Not that that wouldn't have worked, but it was better. Right. Once I saw your beats, I'm like, these beats are better. Go with her beats. Because she's locked in in a way that I never will be. And I think just reading the latest material that you've sent me, it's a joy. It's a joy to see that inherent execution of structural details that are sort of workmanlike, kind of crafty stuff that aren't why you wanted to become a writer in the first place. And using that craft and adding to your line by line skill set, it's created something, in my estimation, a sum greater than its parts. And that's the goal of any sort of editor, is to help the writer apply their finest skill set and add a little bit of. A little bit more and a tweak more and maybe a little bit more clarity so that that special sauce that only they have can actually come out in a way that has never come out before. And I'm not going to presume that this is the greatest thing you've ever written, but I think you've gotten a lot further along in this story in the amount of time that we've worked on it, than perhaps you have on previous things that you've worked on. Oh, absolutely.

I will tell anyone who asks that I came to Storygrid in order to find a way to fix the novel that I had already written that I.

Knew wasn't working, and I used it.

For that, and it worked very well, and I fixed the novel. But since then, I haven't written anything. So using these techniques as the basis to actually start something and write something, going down to this level of looking at the masterwork and trying to copy it, basically. I mean, that idea was so difficult for me to grasp until we actually, I mean, sat down and started doing this, and you sort of hired me on to take on this experiment, and I would not have done it otherwise. I just couldn't bring myself to look at something that I love like Brokeback Mountain, at that level of detail. Break it down and kind of ruin. Kind of ruins it, you know, when you break it down like this, you see all of its inner workings and guts and stuff, and it loses all of its enchantment. That is what happens.

Right.

But then a new level of incredible admiration and inspiration comes out of looking.

That closely at the inner workings of something that you love.

Yeah, it's been really remarkable.

I was listening to one of those online professors that you can download. I mean, that's the great thing about YouTube, is that if you're interested in any one particular thing, you can usually find an expert who has set up a camera and they film themselves giving a lecture. Unfortunately, I forget which lecturer was explaining this. I believe it was part of John Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, which I highly recommend. Oh. Anyway, they were talking about the difference between idolatry and iconography, and I found this fascinating. So an icon is someone that you sort of look up to, but you see them as a human being. Right. So they had the same kind of problems we all do. But you look at their work and you say, wow, if that person was capable of creating such great work, then the possibility that I could is, you know, it's available. That's actually a possibility because that's a flawed human being. I'm a flawed human being. That flawed human being created a work of art, and maybe this flawed human being could too. So that's an icon. You'll get why I'm telling you this. In a second. Now, an idol. An idol. An idol is something that's not transparent. It's an opaque thing that we can never really grasp onto and understand it in any real function. So an idol would be something that would be a magical totem, some sort of person who came down from Earth and was different than you or I. They saw the world in a unique way. They were touched by greatness. They had a quote, unquote talent that you would never be able to approach. So oftentimes, I think what happens is that we get seriously confused between idols and icons. I don't believe that there are really any genuine idols, so to speak. I don't want to get into a controversy. Some people have them, okay? But I think the people who are creating stories and the people who are creating art and the people are doing amazing things. They are icons, and icons are inherently human beings, which means that we ourselves can aspire to iconography. So when we look at a masterwork, our tendency is to be like, oh, my God, there's just no way I'm going to go near this thing. And that person who wrote this masterwork has something that I will never have. So what I love about the masterwork experiment and sort of this global masterwork gestalt that's part of the story grid methodology is that it converts. It looks at works as icons of virtue, as opposed to idols of never you. We will never reach that arena. And I wholly believe that if you don't set your sights at astronomically, incredibly difficult places, you'll never even get near them. So I don't think it's hubris to say, you know what? Let me take a look at this masterwork. Let me really analyze it beat by beat and see if I can't sort of model my story on that. That's actually, I think, a tribute to the work as opposed to a copy slash, exploitation, because, you know, you hold your story up to Annie prose, and they're completely different things. They're different characters, different time periods. Thematically and structurally. They share common things. But so does the Hobbit in Harry Potter.

Right? Right.

So I don't think we're committing blasphemy by really looking at the craft behind the masterworks. In fact, I think most people who write masterworks would be like, go to it, man. Sometimes I don't even know how I put it together, if you can tell me. I mean, Steve Pressfield always says that to me. Like, dude, I always love it when you analyze my stuff, because I had no idea a Lot of the stuff I was doing.

Yeah, yeah.

And when I look at it, I go, oh, my God, I didn't know I was that smart. But I think it's important to think about icons and idols and to steer away from idolizing human beings to a place where you believe that you are so not near their skill set, because it only holds you back, and it will only serve as an excuse for you to not work.

Right. Yeah.

I have turned out more words in the last week of actual, you know, fiction writing than in the last couple of years.

Really?

Well. Well, keep at it, is all I can say, because you're working through this in a way that is exactly how I envisioned and hoped. And, you know, I think all those worries that you had a few weeks ago or a week ago about this thing not having life inside of it were completely unwarranted. What you have done here is. You know, one of the things I always like to say to somebody is everyone knows when a story's working. And the reason why we know intuitively. And you don't have to be a Story Grid certified editor to know when a story is working. All you need to know is. Is sort of the movie or the film of the story sort of clicking through your mind as you're reading it? Are you imagining the scenarios and the clappings of the horses and. And the rain coming down and the smell of the woolen blankets as they're wet and the way the horses are neighing and afraid of the river? Is that running through your mind? Or does it feel like it's a chore to sort of start to picture it? And that's testimony to. Not your structural knowledge. Your structural knowledge is inherent in you following the beats. That's all you have to do.

Right.

What it's testimony to is that 57 years of blue collar work that you did to paint pictures with words so that someone like me can start reading it and immediately the film starts to run. In my mind, that is just testimony to your hard work and your love of language and your love of research and your love of a time period. And you're attracted to this very specific time period. From what I can see is that you have followed that interest and so you have researched that time period. Yeah. You don't have all the details yet, but, you know, you've pictured in your mind over and over and over again what it must have been like to have lived at that time. And all of that sort of fun and fantasy imagining in your mind is really. It's Just, you're. You're taking dictation and you're applying it to the page with words that you've learned how to manipulate. And I don't have any real commentary about the work that you sent me other than to sort of pick out some things that I was just. You know, my heart melted when I read them because I'm like, oh, my gosh, she gets it. She's doing it. Well, I want to hear about those things. Okay, okay, let me. Let me pull it up here from the very start, the opening line. And of course, you'll. You may or may not change this or whatever, but what I loved is at the very first sentence you say, Josiah Reed drags himself from his pallet in the loft of Saltire. I don't even know how to pronounce that.

I don't know either. I just picked it out of that saltire.

Manners, vast stables, and climbs down the ladder. Okay. What I love about that very first sentence didn't really register to me until I'd reached about midpoint of the work that you had sent me, because what you had done in that very first sentence is very similar to what Annie Proulx does all the time, is she's setting up the exposition that explains where he is in that very moment later on in the story. And what I mean by that is that later on in the story, Maddie and Josiah have a conversation. It's sort of the, you know, hey, you know, what school did you go to? Conversation. Right. Like, when you first meet someone, you're getting acquainted. It kind of like, well, I'm from Pittsburgh. Oh, I'm from Portland. Oh, cool. Two P. Towns. Right? So you. You sort of are hashing it back and forth. And so Josiah has, you know, he kind of gives up a little bit about himself, and he goes, oh, man. You know, I grew up in a stable, you know, now things are starting to turn around for me. But I really had humble origins. I was a foundling. I grew up in this hay loft. And it's really terrific because it tumbles all the way back to your very first sentence. Now, this very first sentence, you're presenting a man at the later years of his life. And where is he? He's back where he started, isn't he?

Yeah, yeah.

He's sort of come full circle. And so just by that technique that you use that was inspired by Annie Proulx, you've successfully implied the nature of a heroic journey, so to speak, with the entire story. Just from that sort of introduction, when a Man's living in a hayloft. When he's older, we want to know, oh, my God, how did he get there, right? What happened to this guy? So it's a great sort of expositional thing that's loaded. It's loaded with so much ammunition to generate narrative drive that I absolutely loved it. And the other thing I loved about this new prologue is that our initial reaction about this guy is, boy, he's got to be bitter, right? This is someone who's got to be really not so. So pleased that they're living in a hay loft. Instead, you play with it, and this guy is feeding the birds, right? And you've got Lord Blackfeather, who he's probably sort of. He feeds him every day. He sees him every day, and, you know, gets a little some corn. And that's part of his life, right? It's a beautiful life. He has a relationship to the natural world in a way that any of us would say, hey, that's pretty cool. Bird comes by every day. He has a relationship, he throws down a little corn. The bird eats. This guy is really important in the universe. Even though he lives in a hayloft, if he's not there to throw down that corn, that bird's gonna miss him. That's great. And then lastly, you know, one of the really difficult things that you had to solve was, you know, what. What's the equivalent of the two shirts? What is the thing this guy? What's his totem? What's his temple? What's the thing that Ennis Del Mar en Estel Moore remembers? Jack. He's got his. His little, you know, shrine there. He's got his two shirts. He's got his picture of Brokeback Mountain. They're on the nail. He touches that shirt, he looks at that picture, and he can get through another day. So you had to solve that problem, but you couldn't use shirts, Right. You couldn't cheat.

Or postcards.

Yeah.

Or postcards. Right. You couldn't use a letter. You know, this is a barn guy, right? This guy who lives his life in a barn. He lives with horses. He lives with hay. And what this reminded me of is there's this great moment, the solution that you came up with, which I'll share in a second. But it reminded me of this great episode in Mad Men, that series about 1960s advertising. And the episode was called the Hobo Code. And in the Hobo Code, there's this moment where it's a flashback of the advertising executive, a guy named Don Draper, in his childhood. And he grew up on sort of this kind of falling apart farm somewhere in Indiana or Illinois or somewhere. And it's during the Great Depression. And these hobos would walk by, and they would offer to do some menial labor, to sleep in the barn and maybe get a meal. And so the hobos, as they would travel along the road, they would bring a little piece of chalk with them. And on sort of the gate that led up to these houses, they would put little messages for each other so that when they would see these messages, they would know whether or not the people in there were friendly or if they weren't, or if they would rend them off or whatever. The whole episode is based upon this hobo code that this hobo, you know, a traveling person who has no work, you know, puts on the gate of Don Draper's family's barn after his experience is there. So what you did to solve this problem was. Reminded me of that beautiful decision in that television series, because what you've decided is to make a couple of notches in the side of the wood in the entry to the barn. And so Josiah, you know, every time he walks in and out of that barn, he puts his two fingers and he rubs those two notches. And that was beautiful to me because it's a very tiny little thing in the side at the beginning of your prologue. And again, it's a setup. And you pay off that setup far earlier than Annie Proulx did, which is testimony to your going with Anne's flow, not Annie Pru's flow. So the way it works in your story is that those two notches represent these two guys as they're getting to know each other. They're kind of having this friendly debate about who's taller. So what do men do when they got to get the. They got to get the data, right? So they take the knife and they make the marks of who's taller. And that I loved, because I immediately got it. Those two marks are what gets this guy through the door every single day. If he didn't, if those two marks weren't there, he would live in despair. And so before we even know, this is a love story, right? Because you're not really pinpointing this is a love story at the beginning of the story. It's kind of this fun upstairs, downstairs, kind of Downton Abbey maybe thing. And those two things are part of the revelatory payoff. Oh, my God. This is a love story that we find later on. And what's the other thing That I found. Well, the other thing that I just loved at. At the very end of your work was like Annie Proulx, the sex is almost incidental. You know, it's sort of two guys who find each other attractive at the end of the. The chunk that you sent me. Yeah, they get together. So what? But you're not afraid of saying they're naked in front of each other. That image does flash in the reader's mind, but not in a gratuitous or pornographic way. Just natural to human beings. And then you cut, you know, like enough. That's it. You know, we're not here for that. We're here for something much deeper, much more meaningful. So. Geez, Anne, I don't know what to say other than, you know, keep going. Do you have any questions for me?

I do.

There's a back and forth kind of working process here that I'm. It's kind of new to me because.

I have this list of beats, right, that I'm supposed to be meeting when.

I'm writing, like working on a scene. I've got to get the first sexual contact scene. I write it, and then I realize.

Oh, I should go back and look.

At my list of beats and see if I've missed one. And I have. I missed a bunch of them. And I know that there's no real strong existence exact correlation anymore. Like on the crosswalk between. This beat happens at this point in Brokeback Mountain, and it hasn't happened yet in my story or so, you know, some. That type of back and forth stuff.

Right.

And my sense is I should just.

Keep going and then go back and see if I need to line up more beats or. But what do you think?

Okay, that's a great question. And I had a call earlier with our mutual friend Valerie about this very thing. And generally, here's what I think the beats are for. The beats are for inspiration. They're for clear directives to prime the pomp of your imagination. Okay, so should you follow these beats religiously? My answer would be, if you don't need to, then don't.

Okay.

The key thing about the Beats is what they're saying to you are the moments that in the story that you'll need to have in your story. Whether or not they come at the specific time that Annie Proulx put them in is not important. What's important is that these patterns, these beautiful patterns that Annie Proulx created in Brokeback Mountain, you want to have those patterns in your story too. So whether or not you're following the structural organization of those patterns to the T isn't the important thing. The important thing is at the end of your draft, yeah. You're going to want to go back and go, did I hit that pattern? Did I nail that little beat? Is that in there somewhere? Have I put in the bit about there's a third party, sort of that character who catches them in the actual Joe Aguirre.

Right.

Do I have a Joe Aguirre figure? And is it clear that he's probably holding this information for purposes of his own that will later screw something up or hurt these guys or something? That's what you want to look for. And you know, you have a really nice moment, a bunch of moments in here where you're like, the gun guy, right?

The gun guy whose name I haven't figured out yet.

That's great. The gun guy. That's all you need to know. There's. There's the, the guy who takes care of the guns, the guy who takes care of the logistical details, that's Maddie. And there's the guy who takes care of the horses, that's Josiah. Right? That's what you need. You need the gun guy, the logistical guy and the horse guy all to get this package from here to there. And that's the other great thing, is that you put them on the road, which mirrors all of our movements through the universe. So they're on the road and you've got this gun guy who's this wild card. You're not really sure how to use him yet, but you're not letting that stop you writing. And you're setting up possible all kinds of things. And if you did not have the gun guy, then you lose the triangle of relationship exponential possibilities. So in a one on one relationship, one person can like one person, the other person could like the other person. They could both like each other. I'm talking very generally and generically. But when you have a triangle, it adds so much more nuance. Person one could like person two, Person two could like person three. Person three could like person one. Person one could then like person. Right? So you can really fiddle around with the relationships when you have three in the pot, as opposed to two, right. So that's why you always have the love triangle, because it adds complications and all kinds of nuance to a story that could get really I love you, I love you not. I love you, I love you not. You know, like, that just doesn't really go very far. So the gun guy's a great idea. And just to get back to your central question. No, go as directed. And then later on, what you're going to do is you're going to sort of just review, you know, review what Annie Proulx did say she did this, this, that, and this. Okay. Did I do that? Yeah, it's here. Yeah. This one's over here. That's okay, because it works. Does that work? Yeah, that works. I missed that one. Is it crucial? I don't think it's crucial. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna give myself the liberty not to do that beat. So you see, that's where your editor comes in. Your editor head is going to be far better at telling you whether or not a beat that you may have missed should be in or not be. You might say, you know what? I'm forcing this. I don't need it. But while you're doing your writing, I always say this. You know, just keep that writer's hat on. Keep momentum. Keep the TKs. Use TKs. Until you to your heart's content. Gun guy. TK is great.

Keep doing TK Village TK. Name of in TK. I've got a lot of TK's in here.

Yeah.

I will admit I did spend a little bit of time with maps and street view, trying to get a feel for the scenery, but I'm trying not to get too deep into that.

Yeah, it's working, but I don't want.

To write myself into a corner that then historically or geographically I can't write my way back out of if I find out, you know, that it's wrong.

I'm trying to kind of walk that line a little bit.

I do have some concerns about the word count.

I just.

I can't see myself bringing this story in at 11,000 words.

Well, who cares? You know, like, don't worry about it.

Okay, so that's all I need to hear. Because this thing could become a full length novel.

Well, yeah, if it works 16. If it works at 16. Great. I mean, one of the things that you have to remember about your story versus Annie Proust story is that the American west is sort of a hardscrabble sensibility. It's a world in which the average American and even international readers who are familiar with the American west, there's a whole sort of universe attached to it. So it allowed her to use shorthand and not really have to get into the eloquence of the details of sunsets. I mean, she does it very well. You know, she does it in one sentence. What most of us Would take three sentences to do. My only point is that you're writing a historical. Now, hers was historical, but it's was within sort of the realm of modern day life. It was the turn between. It was really the death of the old west that she was talking about. But you're taking us into a whole other area which is going to require more description, it's going to require more stuff, more, you know, the tap room. I love the tap room. Who. Who wouldn't love the tap room? And so to not include fun tap room moments because of a word count would be a mistake.

Okay.

Because you're not satisfying the core readership that's going to want to read this story. This story is historical. And what do readers of historical fiction usually want? They want that detail, they want that resolution. They want to know what kind of bridle the guy uses or whatever.

Right.

A little bit more about horses, a little bit more about the clothes.

Yeah.

Things like that. Or what historical readers read for.

Yeah. So never worry about going too long. You can really, through levels of editing and line editing, you can. I'm in the middle of writing some back cover copy for some books, Right. And my first drafts are always about 500 words. And I'm like, God, man, I can't put 500 words on the back cover of a book. I got to bring it down to 200. And then I'm like, there's no way I can cut this. So then I let it sit overnight. And then I come in the next morning and I realize I have three sentences saying the same thing. And, oh, those are going. And let me put that in there. And that's what editing is for. You know, if I didn't have those 500 words, I wouldn't have been editing anything. So. Yeah. Short answer is don't worry about word count.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

That relieves my mind, I have to say, just for people listening who may know my other writing. Writing this with the awareness of sort of the kind of brevity that Annie Proulx uses. It's not the American west, but this condensed, distilled way that she has writing. Trying to keep that in mind has been. It's been really interesting. I mean, it has stopped me from putting so many things on the page that I would have put on the page before. So it's been wonderful education in, you know, getting to better brevity in my work.

Yeah.

Anything you want to, like, bring up about the process?

Yeah. One of the things that people, I think, get confused about when they're writing something is they're, they're results oriented. And what that means is that they're concentrating on the endpoint far too much. It's almost like they're fixated on it. So the end point being something like, oh, I've got to do this in 10,000 words. Therefore that's my result that I need to deliver. Or my second novel has to sell at least as well as my first novel. And my first novel sold 10,000. So that my goal is I need the second novel to sell 11,000. And my first novel's inciting incident was this kind of inciting incident. So I better just make that kind of inciting incident a little bit better so that I can sell a little bit more number of copies. And that's what's sort of like a results oriented mindset. And it's what I call the having mode. You know, I think I've talked about Erich Fromm before, but he was a psychologist in the 1970s who clearly identified these two ways of looking at the world. It's like we go after haves and we choose to be, right? So having is about getting that 11,000 copy sell for my second novel. If I could have that 11 copy sell for my second novel, then I will feel better. Okay, now to be is more about. I am working on creating something and I'm not really sure where it's going to go, but I'm going to trust the process. I'm going to trust the things that I've done before because they've brought me through the forest before and they will this time too. And in fact, when I trust the process, I actually learn a whole bunch of new tricks. So those are process driven people and those are people who are living in the be mode. They're being writers who are trusting their process, which they have developed over say, 57 years. That way of thinking, in my estimation, I can only speak from personal experience, is far more satisfying and far more interesting a way to pursue the thing that you're most obsessed about than it is to say I will feel better about myself if I get a bigger house. Therefore, if I have a bigger house, I will have more respect from other people, which will increase my self esteem, which will make me feel better. That can be a very slippery slope. It's not to say that we don't need to attain things, of course we do. But we need to be very clear about what our goal is. If I have to make breakfast, I make my breakfast, right? But having breakfast at the Four Seasons isn't so important to me. So when we are working on our projects and we're saying, well, I'm not at that 15,000 word level yet, or I'm not hitting my page count, or I'm not going, this doesn't seem to be that kind of thing that's going to sell a lot of copies. It's a trap because we're living in a have mode when we're trying to apply our being in a process. So that's why I think the story grid experiment for you has been interesting, because we are so concentrated on the process, not the have at the end. Right. Like, I'm sure in your mind you're like, geez, I, I hope I can have this published in a way that would be interesting and that the people who are emailing me about how, how much they're enjoying the story will be able to buy it and then, you know, maybe I can get that new coffee table if it does well enough. Now, that's perfectly reasonable, but it's not something that you should be focusing on when you're doing the creation.

Right.

So, you know, that's what my, you know, my magic wand, my magic thing that I would want for StoryGrid is. It's process driven, as opposed to results driven. Many times in my career, it's all about results. Sean, can you take this thing and turn it into a bestseller? Right. And if I do do that, it's kind of satisfying, but not really, because it's all about that end result. And guess what happens when I do take that thing and it doesn't become a bestseller? Then people are upset. But it's the same process that brought both results. So as long as I focus on the process of learning more about story and applying the global principles that I can cull from examining multiple stories, then that's all I need. That's living in the process. And it's been my experience that the more I live in the process, the less I have to worry about having the haves almost start to take care of themselves. So I think it's important for everyone listening that if you're sort of listening to StoryGrid podcast or you're listening to the StoryGrid editors roundtable with the goal of sort of learning some secret sauce that's going to get you what you want as opposed to listening to enjoy the process of the examination, you're going to be disappointed. You're going to say, yeah, I wish Sean would shut up and just tell me the secret sauce.

Hand me the magic key.

If he could boil everything down into like, you know, seven paragraphs and really spit it out so that I can make notes and then apply that formula to my stuff and then I can get a bestseller, that would be much more preferable than listening to him talk about process with Ann. But my point is like, the process is all that matters. It's the work. It's the work that frees us from worrying so much about whether or not somebody thinks we're cool or not. Because when we're doing the work, we find ourselves getting more and more insights, having more and more flow, enjoying the process more. And it doesn't mean that every time we do the process we're going to get a good result. It just means that we're doing what we should be doing and that if we keep doing that thing and keep trying to challenge ourselves to get a little bit better at doing it, each and every time we do it, the probability is that eventually, eventually the results will be commercially successful and we can get our new coffee table.

And that's a wrap for episode nine of the Masterwork Experiment. Once again, we ran into a technical problem that cut us off a little short. So in a follow up email, Sean asked me to share that the goal for this episode was just to encourage me and all of us to keep our writing hat on, to trust the process and let it bring us to shore. Leave the results until it's time to edit. In the show notes, you'll find links to all my working documents, John Vervaeke's lecture on Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.

Which Sean referred to in this episode.

And an article on Hobo signs just for fun. For everything StoryGrid related, visit storygrid.com if.

You'D like to learn more about me.

And my writing and editing work. You'll find me at annholley.net, that's a n h a w l e y dot net where I'm posting my draft scenes, complete with TKs and temporary character names like Gunguy. And you can check all that out on my blog. You'll also find me every Wednesday on the Editor Roundtable podcast, where I team up with four of my fellow certified StoryGrid editors to analyze the story structure of a movie or a novel each week to support the podcast, tell other authors about us, and leave us a rating and review. Join us again next week for the final episode of the Masterwork Experiment when I bang out all my remaining scenes and we discuss the editing steps that are going to have to take place between that point and eventual publication. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.