Put the Darkness on Paper

Hello, and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I'm a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, I'm continuing my work on my nonfiction book Running Down a Dream. And over the couple previous episodes, I finally had a breakthrough on what the book was about. And so I went back through and rewrote a huge section of the book and sent it over to Sean to get his feedback and to make sure that I was going in the right direction. So it's a good episode. I continue to struggle with how to talk about these episodes because it's such a personal journey for me, but I know that writing is a personal journey for everybody. So I hope you get a lot out of it. And let's jump in and get started. So, Sean, based on our talk a couple weeks ago, I went back through and tried to rewrite the first section of the book from this point of view of telling my own story. So what I kept trying to think of was how did I write the introduction and how did that feel? And then start applying that to the chapters. And I started. So I re. I had to, like, rearrange things, and it was really. We'll get into the specifics of how I did it. But anyway, so I sent you about 9,500 words. That was the next. Forget how many chapters, trying to rewrite it from the point of view of telling my story instead of this kind of how to stuff. So curious your thoughts on how I'm doing so far?

Well, one of the things a lot of people ask me is, is how do you know when your editing is working for a client? And so it's a very. That's a very tricky question, because what happens oftentimes is that you've gone through the material so many times that you lose any ability to have a fresh read when it comes back in. So knowing where all the potholes were before can really detract you, meaning you. When I'm speaking as an editor, it can really detract the editor from reviewing, say, you know, draft number nine, because, you know, you can't. You don't even remember draft number one. And it's often hard to even get a grip of what the point of the whole thing is sometimes. Yeah.

So the Way I always know that I'm on track and that the client is on track is the rare case when I read something and I don't feel like it's work because it feels as if it's fresh, it's flowing. I don't start rewriting the sentences and redoing the stuff. And while at the beginning, the introduction that you wrote is, you know, it's 85% there. And when you sent this material to me, I just started line editing it. And by the time I finished line editing, it was, I think it's a very powerful prologue. And then, so the idea was, the note I gave you is at the very beginning of your book, you gotta suck in the reader, and you've got to let them know what the problem is that you are trying to solve for them. And that's a very tricky thing to do in a big idea work of nonfiction because you don't want to come across as, you know, those late night advertising guys selling the Vegematic. Because.

Everybody understands that, especially in the creative world, there is no magic pill. There's no magic solution to becoming more creative and being better at what you're doing. It's basically learning how to work the most efficiently without letting resistance overwhelm you. So, anyway, so your prologue is really setting the stage. And the way it sets the stage is by really opening up an old wound that you had that you really didn't want to do it. I mean, we've been working on this nonfiction big idea project almost as long as we have on your novel. And it wasn't until a few weeks ago that you were like, okay, okay, okay, I'll really go to that place that I really don't want to go. And when you did, you know, you got some great feedback. And it rings. The story really rings true and painful. And that's a great way of sucking in the reader is not making them feel pain, but to empathize with your pain. And everybody can, you know, everybody's. Anybody who's done anything in their life has faced that all is lost moment that you represent at the prologue of your story. So then my next note was to say, you're really on a roll here. If you now go into, okay, here's my handy dandy. How to advice the reader is going to be like, seriously, I want to know what happened the day after or the moment after what just happened. So I told you, you should really go back and weave in the story of how you came to the major realizations of your creative life. And your big question after I said that is, but it's kind of boring. And can I write something that's not technically true and represent it as truth in nonfiction? And my answer was, yes, you can. In fact, you have to. No one wants to know how many days it took you to come to these realizations. Writing and telling a story is about leaving out all the crap that nobody cares about.

So dramatizing real life events in your life is the responsibility of the nonfiction writer, because no one can write the truth of moment by moment stuff. That doesn't mean you make it up. What it does mean is, is that you organize the principles that you want to convey to the reader in a way in story form, so that all of the how to tricks and tools that you already had, now you take those tools and you say, how did I think of that one? Oh, right. That's when I talked to Josh. Oh, that's when I talked to Dan. That's so I need. That's when Candace asked me that thing that I didn't want to answer. So now I'm going to tell you what I think of your latest draft. I think it's right on the money because.

It didn't feel like work for me to read it. Now, this is no knock on you or any writer, but an editor is a human being and we see this stuff as work. So when you send me the 10,000 words, I'm like, that's another piece of shit I gotta read.

Not literally, but I mean. And sorry.

It's fine.

That's kind of like my initial reaction. It's like, oh, that's another thing I have to do. Oh, okay. That's gonna take up my, you know, my 2 o' clock to 3:30 window today. Great. And then when I got to it, I'm like, here it is. And then I start reading it and I'm like, huh, okay. Wow, that's interesting. I wonder what happens next. And that's when it doesn't become work. And that's when I know you're in the groove. So all I can say is keep going using this sort of linear storytelling framework to build your case. And I think this is really going to work when you get to that kind of second, all is lost moment. I don't want to ruin the story for everyone, but yeah, at the end.

Of the middle build.

Exactly at the end of the middle build, you have another major sort of meltdown. And it goes to what Steve and I are working on at the same time. Steve's now Steve Pressfield is now doing. He's running excerpts of a new project that he and I are working on called the Artist's Journey. And what's really neat is that I'm going to try, as the publisher of Black Irish, I'm going to try and get both your book and Steve's book ready at the same time. Because what you're doing is you're approaching this same problem from the opposite spectrum. So Steve's looking at this big existential problem that he's calling the Artist's Journey, which I think is a great title, but he's looking at it from the point of view of the big 30,000 foot, philosophical, oh, my gosh, why is this happening to me? And why does this happen to anyone? So that's the way he's looking at it from the very big mountaintop. And you're looking at it like somebody who has to fix problems immediately or you're never, ever going to get to go on any artistic journey because you can't pay your bills. So we have this macro sensibility, and yours is the micro sensibility, and you're both working independently. And I'm at the. I mean, I'm the triangle in between both of you. Which is really interesting for me because when I was editing Steve's book, I'm thinking, wow, this is cool, because Tim's book is actually supporting all of the things that Steve is saying, and what Steve is saying is supporting the notions that Tim is fighting in his book. So I hope we can make that work because it'd be really great to publish these books at the same time.

Yeah. So I have questions on that, but I want to come back to it.

So.

You know, it's funny, I think I sent them to you on Monday because I wanted to. I got to tell you, I was super proud to have that to you and give you a couple days because usually it's like we're talking in, like, three hours. Here's what we're going to talk about. But when I sent it to you, I was talking to Candice, and I was like, you know, a lot of times when I send Sean my work, I feel like I'm sending him something I know that doesn't work, but I don't know what else to do. And that kind of gives you something to give me feedback on, which usually kicks me into what I actually need to do, which is what's been happening. But I sent that to you, and I was like, I really think I got it this time. But those are the times where I'm Then, like, then I'm like, I really hope I'm right. But, yeah, I felt like it started working really well. And there's a couple things that I noticed doing it that I wanted to share. So one is, you know, one of my worries with writing down all these kind of tools I've used along the years or developed along the years is that, you know, people arguing with them basically, well, that won't work for me because of this, and that won't work for me because of this. And I realized, like, as I basically turned every pronoun into I instead of you or we, it takes. It takes away all of that angst because it's like, well, this works for me. You can't argue with that, like, because all I'm saying is, like, this. This is what works for me. I'm sure we've talked about it here before, maybe even recently, where I heard a story Elizabeth Gilbert told about the book Eat Love, Pray, or Eat Pray, Love, where somebody came up to her, and the woman was like, you know, reading about how you left your husband, your abusive husband gave me the courage to leave my abusive husband. And so I was able to leave him. But, like, she did not say in the book that he was abusive. In fact, she. I felt like she went a long ways towards saying that it was all her. Like, it had nothing. You know, it wasn't him at all. But people take your story and their story and combine it into something that they need. And so it's really given me this freedom to just tell my story and, you know, share these things that have been helpful to me, hoping that people will combine it with their own story and find something that will help them. So that's been good. But it's funny because I kept slipping back into that old way. Like, I would have to go back and, like, the last three paragraphs, pull out all the we's and all the you's and replace them with I's. And because I kept. Like, I've been writing this. All my nonfiction has been this very kind of, I'm up on the mountaintop giving advice down to the masses kind of, you know, way. And so telling this personal story has been a real big switch for me. So that was. I thought that was interesting. One, like, how, like, how I. I kept slipping back into it, having to go back and clean it up. And the other of just, like, it kind of released me from this burden of trying to write something that will work for everybody, because it now is just My story. And I'm not making any assumptions about the person reading it, that's true.

And I think I remember reading years ago, Tim Ferriss book the Four Hour Work Week. And the parts that I really liked in that book were when he was talking about personal stuff. So he was talking about, you know, what I really wanted to do was to work a minimal amount of time so that I could do these other things. And, and when he was talking about his businesses and these ideas that he had and how he decided to make them work and how some of them did and some of them didn't, that's what really sucked me in. And I always thought those are the, the reason why is that everybody has their own problems. Everybody has their own specific hurdles and obstacles that they have to overcome. And everybody. So empathy happens, meaning they're able to understand the voice of the writer when the specificity of pain and obstacle is so focused and narrow and true. So that's why I think your story is working. And it also, as you said, what it does is it frees you up from all the people. Like, that won't work for me. No, that won't work for me now because you can say, hey, I understand that. Think about the things that I went through, not specifically, but as general obstacles. So for instance, you say in your book, in your introduction, or maybe it's in the first part, I don't remember, which is fine, that one of the catastrophic fantasies that you had when you face this moment, this all is lost moment, that oh my gosh, I, I'm broke and I'm going to lose the house if I don't figure something out is that you would have had to have gone back to Candace's family's house and have coffee.

Every morning with your father in law. And you know, I'm sure your father in law is fine, but that will get any man's blood to run cold.

And so the fact that you were voicing that very particularly specific, you know, catastrophic fantasy that becomes universal for any guy who reads this. Oh my God, imagine that. Imagine it getting that bad. And it also, you know, it also frees up people to say, well, that did happen to me. Well then, then you fight your way out of that circumstance using the same tools that I used because they're applicable. So the great thing about, and the difficult thing about the Big Idea book is to realize that a lot of the Big Idea is, comes from your individual point of view and your individual experiences. So separating the big ideas that we have from ourselves and Using those big ideas as a way to pump up our egos. Like, oh, I came up with this great big idea and let me tell you poor people down there, you know, below me, how it came to me, that doesn't work as well as something really horrible happened to me and I had to solve a problem. And here's how I went about doing it. Here's how I ran down the dream that I really wanted to make real. That taking yourself off of the, you know, the lectern and, you know, talking directly to people, that's what I think makes Malcolm Gladwell work so well, is that his voice is very, you know, friendly. It's like, I'm just a normal Joe who had some ideas about this thing. So I decided to go out and figure it out. It's not, you know, didactic.

Yeah, he talks about, I've heard him in interviews, talk about his dad a lot and how his dad was like this big, well known scientist, I think. But how anytime, anywhere, if somebody said something or spoke about something that he didn't understand, he was never afraid of looking like an idiot. He would just ask, like, hey, wait, I don't know what that means. Like, I've tried to practice that of like, if somebody says something and they use a word that I don't know what it means, I just stop them and say, I don't know what that word means. And so I think he got that from his dad of, like, he never goes into anything trying to be the smart guy, right? He goes into it with, like, I think one of the greatest ones that he talked about. Was it the ketchup or the mustard? Was it the mustard? Or maybe there was something about shampoo where, like, he was following one story and he was interviewing somebody about it and they're like, no, no, no, no, the story's not here. The story's over here. And he's like, oh. And just like changed everything that he was doing to follow this new, more interesting story, you know. So, yeah, it's been interesting. So that's been probably the biggest kind of freedom thing because that also led me to this thing I've been really kind of worried about and I've touched on it some, but is that I felt like I wanted to write this book for, for like the creative journey. Right. But the problem is that the whole first half of my journey of running down a dream was not becoming a writer or anything. It was trying to get this business off the ground. And so telling this story allows me to share, to just share that. To share that journey. And I even say I think it was in. And I thought I might end up adding this into the introduction, but, you know, you. You had me. Because I still want to break the book up into the middle, build into three sections. And so I sent you where. Like, there. I did this little interstitial at the end where I'm like, okay, let's pause here and see. See where I was at and talk a little bit about that. And I talked a little bit about how my dream was vague. Like, when I decided to chase it down, I didn't even really know what I was chasing. It was almost like I was more running away from something more than chasing a specific thing, because I didn't. Like, I didn't consciously know at the time that I wanted to be a writer.

Right.

And so. And. And then once again, I. Which I. It's one of those things of, like, once I realized it, I realized I feel like I should know it by now, which is like, I bet there's a lot of people that feel that way. You know, I tend to feel like that's weird. And most people know they want to be a writer. No, they want to be an artist, or. No, they want to be a music. Where I just kind of was like, I'm just gonna keep following this until I figure out what I want. And I. I'm as. I. As I got to write that out. I'm like, you know what? I bet there's a lot of people that are like that, that they. They almost know more what they don't want than specifically what they want. So, yeah, I felt really good about it. And I felt like when I sent it to you, I was like, okay, I think I got it now. And I ended up having to rewrite. Most of that is fresh writing, but I ran through it so fast because I was just rewriting things. I knew exactly what I had to write. Once I knew my way into the chapter, I just burned it out, and it was ready to go. So even though I sent you 9,000 words and most of those were a fresh rewrite, it went pretty fast compared to writing something from scratch.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's usually the way it works. When you can. It's funny, but when you have the task of explaining something from your own life that you learned, it's much easier to write than sort of taking the very philosophical and professorial approach of there are nine principles of, you know, thermodynamics that. Because then it becomes very stringent and structured and it doesn't have any narrative drive to it. So I do want to comment about your notion, and I think you really do make that point very clearly about the necessity of understanding that you're not going to magically wake up with this realization, oh, this is. Oh, this is the thing that I should be doing. It actually takes a very long, difficult, painful progression. I can only. I can speak personally in that. I used to approach my life as being a publisher. I thought that my role was to become somebody like Bennett Cerf, you know, the guy who founded Random House. And so that was my misguided representation of what I thought my inner trajectory and hero's journey had taught me that my life was about becoming a publisher. So what's interesting is that as I was pursuing becoming a publisher, I had to develop a whole set of skills in order to push me on my road. And one of those skills was to learn story structure. So I'm like, if I want to become a publisher, I have to become a really good editor. So in order to become a really good editor, I have to have something that no editor, other editor that I know has, and that is to have a fundamental understanding of story structure. So I went out and I learned all this stuff. I, you know, McKee and Aristotle and Friedman and blah, blah, blah. And I thought. I always thought those were like, you know, these little added skills that would push me to publisher. And it wasn't until I failed as a publisher. In. In some ways, I don't. I don't consider myself a failure as a publisher. But it wasn't until I had a d, you know, dark night of the soul, understanding that being a publisher as my defining thing was meaningless. It didn't give me the thing that made me feel comfortable and secure. And it took me a while to figure out, oh, my gosh, editing, that's the thing I can do, you know, effortlessly. That gives me a lot of pride, that helps me help others. So it took me a good 10 to 12 years of my career just to make that discovery. And that's after another eight or nine, to discover the necessity of really having a handle of story structure. So the hero's journey is not this cathartic moment where you realize, oh, I should be a plumbing supply sales businessman. It takes a lot. You know, you might work in the electrical market first. And it doesn't mean that you have to become, you know, an artist, quote, unquote. Artist, meaning somebody who's an actor, writer, or any of those sort of traditional artistic, painter, musician. You can Be an artist by providing incredible service in your coffee shop. And I know Seth Gilden talks about this a lot and I never really truly recognized it until, you know, Steve and I had worked for a long time and to work with people who are like amazing proofreaders, these people bring an art to it that improves things dramatically. And so this notion that. And the other thing I'll mention is that in order to this goes to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's difficult to really open up your imagination and your the right side of your brain to discovering your inner gift when you've got bills to pay. Yeah. So you need to actually establish a level of security for yourself before you can even open up that vault in any meaningful way. And you know what your book does is it shows this really interesting progression of some guy discovers that what he thought he wanted actually isn't what he wants. And what he wants is to control his life so he starts his own business so he can control his own life, so maybe something will come to him that he wants to do. Then he starts working with writers, doing his business, and discovers that's pretty cool. And then discovers, oh, well, I need to write some stuff in order to get more business. And then discovers, oh my gosh, I always really did like writing. And slowly it's this non cathartic moment, but a progression of exploration that eventually reveals the secret to you. And I think that's another great thing. Another really interesting element in the book that you're working on now in this draft is that you really discuss and show that you didn't do this alone. Right. You had your parents, you had your wife, you had your son, you had Josh, you had your friend Matt, you had your friend Dan. And so without saying, you know, I couldn't have done this without the help of my friends, you actually bring your friends into the story and your family into your story, and they appear as mentors and heralds and all those things that are in a hero's journey that you would have never thought of doing. If I said, you know, Tim, you should write this, like the hero's journey.

Yeah. I mean, really, what I heard you say, what I kind of took away from, it was like I have to keep turning towards the pain. You know, I actually just this morning I was. What was I talking to Connor about? We were coming back from something and I forgot what he had asked, but I ended up saying like, oh, this is what it was he asked about. When we first moved to Nashville, we had, because of the market Here for housing. We ended up having to rent a place on site unseen because stuff turns over so fast. And we had been promised that it would have. It would be basically, it would be another 50% bigger than it ended up being. And of course, I didn't know until I showed up with the moving truck and they didn't have any. So we ended up up getting stuck with this place that we didn't like at all. But what happened was we had signed a year lease, but using the fact that.

They lied to us is the blunt version, we were able to get out of that lease six months later. And we ended up finding this really great house that we've lived in for the past two plus years. And so this morning Connor and I were talking about that because we're moving again. And he said he's like, so. He's like that, you know, so are you, like, thankful that we got that. That apartment? They lied to us about it because that, like, got us out of the lease, which then allowed us to live in the house that we've been in now that we love so much, you know, And I was like, yeah, I guess so, you know, because. And I just told him, I said, you know, it's. As much as we try to in our life avoid the painful situations, we rarely grow in good times, we always grow in painful times. And so as I. So, like, one of the things that in the chapters I sent you was the story of when Candace went to the grocery store and ended up having to leave. And. Oh, dude, I literally have not thought about that in years. Like, I buried that motherfucker deep in the ground because I did not like thinking about that. And so like last week, so every Wednesday.

So my therapist is literally like a mile from my kid's school, and I meet with him every Wednesday. And so I end up working from a coffee shop after I drop him off at school because it's not worth coming into my office. I always work at this coffee shop and I sit in the same place every Wednesday. And it was the morning that I wrote that, and there was another one I wrote that was super painful. I think it was the one with the nervous breakdown. And I'm like sitting there just. I don't even know how to explain it. It was just so painful to, like, dig back down into those places because I'm sitting there for that chapter and I'm like, okay, how do I get into this? Like, I know what I need to say, but I need a story to get me into this. So I'M like thinking through. And then that popped in my head and again, I haven't thought of that in years. And I was just like, oh God. And then I'm like, oh, now I got to write it down, like. And I told Candace about that later and she's like, oh my. She hadn't thought about it in years either, you know, and. And so it was just like. So I just kept thinking like, what's the most painful way into this, into what I need to write? And that's just what I basically opened each chapter with.

So, yeah, that's the reason why that story works so well is that the way we organize our being able to walk around day to day is we have to have a general feeling that we're a decent person. All right? We have to. Or it would be very difficult to get anything done if we're constantly. And I know we all have our own inner, you know, voices that tell us we're terrible, but generally we, we have to have a sense that, you know what, at the very least, I put food on the table. My family eats well where we have a house. I'm a good father. I'm not perfect. I'm a good father. I'm a good husband, which makes me a good person. So the reason why that story is so upsetting is because it's evidence that can go right up your hierarchy of value of yourself. So the story that you relate in this thing, I'll just briefly mention it, is that your wife and your young, I mean, he was like the kind. He was the age where the kid has to be in the stroller strapped in or he'll flap around the entire. He'll be a complete menace at the grocery store. So your wife has finally, you know, she's, she's progressed all the way. And it's not easy to go fill a cart filled with groceries when you've got a two year old or one year old squirming around in the seat. So your wife gets to the checkout line, they start scanning the stuff, they get it all done. The baggers have it in the bags, she hands over the card and she's declined and she's humiliated and that she comes home and she confronts you with her humiliation. And so what that did to you in that moment was send you down or, you know, just all of those things that keep you, you know, walking around and accomplishing even the smallest things were completely knocked over. Oh my gosh, I don't have any money in the bank. My wife couldn't buy groceries. I can't feed my family. If I can't feed my family, what kind of man am I? If I'm no good of a man, I'm a terrible father. If I'm not a terrible father, I'm a terrible husband. Oh, my gosh. Everything that I thought about myself is untrue. I'm terrible, not good. And that is drama.

That forces us. And I'm saying us because your experience. Every person has had an experience like that where something happens that makes them doubt all of the things that they. They come to rely on internally. This is what drama is. This is like what great storytellers do is they. They recreate these moments that make the characters lose their sense of self. And so that's why that story. And, you know, I didn't get into it specifically, but when I read that, I was like, oh, my gosh, that's happened to me before. That's happened where I haven't had enough money to buy the groceries, or I, you know, or I forgot my wallet and all these people are standing behind me. There's nothing more humiliating or to actually have to put some stuff back because you only have $90, and it's $99. So you're actually having the person uncheck things that's happened to me. That's no fun. But what it does make you do is realize, okay, what I thought about myself is obviously not true. So let's fix what's broken here. So that's. And that comes very early on in your book. And that's a really good thing, because the reader is going to say, geez.

I thought Tim Grohl had it all together. Look at. This guy's a mess. Which is exactly what you want. You want to say, look, everybody at one time in their life has been a mess. Abraham Lincoln was a mess. Grant was a mess. These guys push through the mess, and you can't do. And I did. And believe it or not, Tim Grohl even did.

Yeah, like, even as you were starting to tell that story, I thought, don't tell the story. And then I'm like, wait, wait, I wrote it down. It's going in a book.

Don't tell the story. Right. Yeah, exactly. Well, it just. That things not power. The more times you tell that story, the less powerful it will be to you. It's easy for me to say. I've got plenty of stuff that I don't want to talk about either. That's what makes writing difficult. You know, it's not. It's really fun to come up with imaginative things and write them down. But the hard part is realizing the dark moments within yourself and the darkness inside of you and putting that literally on paper and explaining it. I have dark things in my past, and here's a really dark one. So what that does, it's like ethos, pathos and logos. You're establishing your ethic here as a writer. You're saying, I am willing to go into really dark places and admit the darkness in order to reveal to you a deeper truth that I learned. I've gone into the chaos of my own life and I've confronted some really bad demons. And here's the story and I'm just a simple guy. I'm not really. I don't consider myself a genius. But you know, if I can do it, you can too. And that's really the message that you're trying to get across here. And I think it's working. I really do. I mean, this is what, this is what makes Steve Pressfield such a great writer is that he's the first one. It wasn't easy for him. It took him a long time to be able to do what you're doing at a much younger age than what he did. And me, I don't know that I've ever written anything that self revelatory. So you should really, you know, you should really say, you know what, I've got guts. I just put down a story that I've buried and my wife is buried too, to protect me. That wasn't about Candace. She buried that story to protect you. She didn't want to hurt you. Bringing up something that was, you know, you got over it. It's fine now, but who wants to bring that up?

All right, I'm not crying this episode. You can't do that to me.

Okay, so I'm going to change the subject. So I want to go back to talking about publishing because I just have some questions on that because. So Black Irish, the publishing house that you and Steve own, is publishing my book as well. And we've set a pub date for July 11th. Right, yeah, I have that. Right, Right. Okay. So looking at that date.

So I have two questions. The first is, when do you need this manuscript? Assuming I finished the book with the kind of writing you just looked at, when do you need that finished manuscript?

So the first thing you want to do as a publisher is come up with the title of the project that you want to publish. So in this case, the title is Running Down a Dream. And then you want to check, make sure that the contracts are signed. So you write down that date that that happens. And then you want to assign an ISBN, which is, you know, something that you get from Bowker that tells the computers, you know, that this is your specific title. And then you set a publication date. Now, we set originally a publication date of sometime in June, but it became, you know, after talking to you and Steve, it just didn't seem to work. So we've set a July 11th publication date. So from that point, you want to move forward by, you know, you want to first contact your cover designer and make sure that he can. He or she can get the COVID done within your range of time. And you want to, you know, book your interior designer, too, who designs the insides of the book and. And give them a shot over the bow and see if they have time to do it. So simultaneously after you set your publication date, you shoot emails to those people and say, yeah, I'm going to have a manuscript for you sometime. Probably in this case, probably April. Is that going to work for you? And then they get back to you and they say, yeah, yeah, let me know, you know, more specifics as they come. Okay, then, since we've been editing as it goes, you know, I'm not setting out a strict date of when I get my editorial notes to you because we're doing it week by week. But just to answer your question quickly, I'm going to need your manuscript probably March. I'm sorry, April. We need to lock the manuscript by April 30th.

What does lock mean?

It means that we have done the editing. You've gone through the manuscript a number of times, and you're ready to go. You're ready to send it to copy editing. Okay, so locking the manuscript means that you're happy with the final product. And then now all changes that happen to it are because of stylistic proofreading changes or typos, et cetera. But you're not going to rewrite chapter 19 after we lock. Okay, April 30th.

Okay, now how long does that usually take? Because, like, I'm assuming you're gonna send me back. Because you always talk about, with Steve, you're like, I send them back like, okay, this chapter needs this. You need like. Like a, you know, an extra chapter in between these two. Like, you need to rewrite this section, like, how long? Because I'm going to send you this draft. But then that's not locked in date. That's like, you give me back a bunch of notes to go Fix date. So when. How long does that part take?

Well, with Steve.

For example, I finished my editorial notes for Steve last Friday, which took me about 10 days from delivery to notes to him. And my notes were very specific in that I said, here's my reorganization of your draft. Go through it and fix anything that you don't like, and then we'll lock it. So Steve went through it, and he got it back to me today after only four days with it. And, you know, he made maybe 20% changes in what I did, and now it's locked. So you're way behind now.

Okay.

I'm just kidding.

Okay, good to know.

No, but for you, since we've been editing as we go, I've already done, like, a line edit on this first 5,000 words. So you know what I'll do? It'll probably take me about a week or 10 days. After you deliver your first draft, which would be your 20th draft, you'll probably get that to me. If you got that to me, like, say, April 20th, we could probably lock it down by April 30th.

Okay. I was. I'm not gonna take that long.

Great. Because the sooner you get it done, the sooner we can start working on marketing stuff and all that. So I always like to lock the book and get it done super quickly so that all other efforts can be done to promotion.

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