The Craft of Non-fiction

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 am 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, we start off by going over the new draft of the introduction to my book, but it becomes about something bigger. It becomes about the craft of nonfiction writing. And, you know, sometimes I kind of have an idea of where Shawn's going with something and, you know, what he's going to call important. And then sometimes, like in this episode, he really dives into one specific part that, to me, isn't the most important thing, but he really points out and shows how it's the most important thing. And so it's a really good episode. I got a lot out of it, and it's helping me see what it means to write nonfiction in a whole new way. So we'll go ahead and jump in and get started. So, Sean, last week, after we talked, I went off to work on my homework because, you know, we walked through the conventional. The conventions and obligatory scenes of the nonfiction Big idea book. And those were really helpful to get me to look at this from lots of different viewpoints. And as we talked, we kind of came across this idea, this thing I wanted to say about. We talked about shame. And then as I was working through it, again, I think it was just working through the emotional journey that every writer has to go through. And so I went back to the tipping point, like you said, and I actually printed out the introduction of Tipping Point. And I went through and, like, wrote with a red pen, brackets around each different section, what he was notes on, you know, what that section was doing in the. In the introduction, how many words were in that section, and the percentage of the overall introduction. So I could get an idea of, you know, what kind of. What do you. What percentage of the introduction he was committing to each piece. And then I sat down and started working on my own, redoing it from this standpoint of, you know, what. What am I trying to say? What am I hoping to help people with, and what is the counterintuitive thing that I'm trying to say? And so I landed on, I believe that the idea that you must suffer for your art is a lie. And that's one of the things that I want to kind of get out into the world is. You don't have to, like, sacrifice your life for your art. You don't have to be depressed for your art. You don't have to constantly punish yourself physically and mentally in order to succeed. And then, as I wrote it out, I came up with five distinct phases that every creative person goes to along the way towards, you know, success, both internally and externally in their creative path. So then I wrote the. Rewrote the introduction from that point of view. It came to about 2,300 words. And then I also put together, like, my theme and some notes on the five parts, and I sent you both of those, so would love your thoughts. Okay.

First of all, I have to say that I think you made a giant leap forward, and you're getting very close to something very clear and powerful. I'm a little hesitant to start where you know of where to start because there's. There's a bunch of sort of craft issues with the introduction versus, you know, really nailing the theme. So why don't we. Instead of me getting into the specifics of, you know, trying to fix your introduction so it flows better, why don't we talk about your five stages, your central idea and all that stuff? So let me ask you a couple of questions, which I'm going to pull from, you know, my standard six question list, you know, that editors have to ask themselves when they're working on a book. The first question is, what's the genre? We've already established this is the big idea nonfiction book. What are the obligatory scenes and conventions of the genre? We did a whole episode last week about what all those are. I think there are about nine of them. What is the point of view? That's the third question. So the point of view, all this means is, who is telling this story, and why are they telling this story? So the point of view is, is Tim Grohl and why are you telling this story? Tim?

I'm telling this story. I think there's two reasons. One is I want to debunk the myth that the creative journey has to be painful or excruciating or depressive, or overall, that your best work comes from when you're in a bad place. The other is I want to teach how you can go from the beginning of your creative journey, which is basically, I want to create something to a place where you've been successful and you can actually do that in a healthy way and enjoy the process instead of suffering through the process. So that's. My point of view is like, I've worked With so many different creative people. And of course, you know, I read and study others and like these ones that are like, have suffered or like committed suicide or, you know, like all of these stories of these great creative people that were also just like horribly unhappy are the ones that are often held up as like, the people.

Right.

While I work, I've worked with so many wonderfully creative people that are extremely successful and they're happy and content and create out of a joyful place instead of out of a, you know, a damaging or harmful or depressive space. And so I want to show and prove that you can do this in a way that is emotionally healthy and also show people ways that they can do it that are emotionally healthy.

Okay, I just want to take one small step backward and ask you why the notion of being an artist, being a dark art, meaning you have to go to the depths of your soul and, you know, sort of reach a, an almost fugue state of desperation before you can create something great. Why does that idea bother you so much?

Well, one is, I mean, just fundamentally, I think it's a lie. I think, yeah, I think it's a, it's a lie that is perpetuated over and over and over. It's also a great excuse for people that aren't creating. The other is like, I've now done it both ways and my best work comes from a good place, not a bad place. And again, as I watch people, you know, I've worked with the artists that are like in and out of rehab and can barely hold their, their life together. And then I've worked with the ones that like, have a healthy home life, are married with kids, and have, you know, and are just overall happy and they both create great work. So I hate this idea that you have to like sacrifice your life in one way or another in order to create art because it's just not true. And I think that it becomes both, like I said, both an excuse for people, but also even more, you know, every lie, I think it keeps people from trying to go after it because they feel like they, they're not willing to sacrifice all these things that they don't really have to sacrifice, if that makes sense.

Right. So I get it. So you're, you're trying to stop people from using the starving, soul searching artists as an excuse not to engage their creative spirit.

Yeah, that. Or that people see it as like the path, like, okay, I have to do it this way in order to be a real, truly creative person.

Right. I think there's, there's this notion that there's this kind of. And I think Jeff Goins writes about it in his latest book, you know, the Starving Artist Myth. I don't think that's the name of this title, but that's what I. What is it?

Yeah, it's real. Artists don't starve.

Right. Okay. I think that concept is people think, oh, the writer's lifestyle or the artist's lifestyle is romantic. And romantic meaning having a, you know, usually a tragic ending.

So your book is to dispel the myth that you have to be a dark soul in order to create anything. And in fact, what you're saying is, not only is that not true, engaging that part of yourself is dangerous because it exiles you from the rest of humanity. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And I also feel like asking our artist to be unhealthy for us to get something from them is a bad way as a society. Like, if I. If I want to back up even more, that's not a healthy way to look at it. And that is not what I want to require of my. Of the artist that I love is their soul.

Right.

And so, and so my belief is you don't have to require that of them. You don't have to. You know, I feel like the belief that you can't create great art and also be happy at the same time that they're mutually exclusive is an extremely dangerous lie. And so many people believe it.

Yes. And it gives people an excuse to be nasty to other people too. You know, you just remember, I remember the kids in high school who decided, oh, I'm gonna be really cool and be an artist. And then they just ended up being very selfish and, you know, taking drugs and doing really stupid things and hurting other people in the name of art, which is exactly the opposite of what art is. Art is about creating something. It's about changing your worldview by self examination. Through the creative process, we become. We know ourselves better. So I think your big idea is that the creative process is not an inferno of hell. It's difficult. Of course it's difficult, but it can be. You can go through this process in a healthy way that does not require your sobriety or your mental effectiveness.

Yeah.

Like, I want to present it as like, it's hard. Much like, you know, anything worth doing is hard. You know, that's okay. It's. But you can enjoy the process. You can enjoy the hardness of it. You know, this is what I try to teach my kids about. Anything they want to accomplish is like, yes, practicing Your piano sucks. But you were so happy after your recital. When you did, you played this extremely complicated song, right? So you can enjoy the hard parts of it without destroying yourself. And I think the other thing I want to accomplish is to lay out what is coming for each person, but also give them hope that they'll be able to get through it in a healthy way. And that's why when I lay it out, I'm kind of like, okay, you're going to start here, and this is what you're going to face. And then after you overcome that, you're going to be at this stage, and this is what you're going to face. And here's how to work through that and all the way to the end, which is, you know, to me, the goal is to create from a place where you're creating for the joy of creating. And that is all. But that's like step five for everybody, you know?

No, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's the paradox of what you're talking about, and you talk about it in your new introduction and also in your notes to yourself here. The paradox is that there are these two forces that resistance uses to really pummel you. It's sort of the universal, the two big punches. If you're fighting resistance in a boxing match and you're an amateur fighter, and you go in there, he's Muhammad Ali, and he's got two amazing punches, right? He's got a jab that will sting you right in the face called fear. And so fear stick is constantly stinging you. So what you do when you face fear is you want to run away from it. So you want to go back in your corner and, you know, get some water and chill out for a while. So that run that makes you run away from the work. The other punch that he has is called shame. And the shame, it's not the shame.

That we usually associate with shame, which is doing something wrong, morally reprehensible, and having society say to us, you shouldn't do that, you shouldn't steal, therefore your shame should be overwhelming to the point where you give yourself up for, you know, punishment. That's not the shame we're talking about. We're talking about the shame. Self shame, self flagellation, the shame of not doing your work. So once you're in the corner running from fear, not doing your work, then he comes over and he punches you again with shame. And the shame is, you got to get back in here, dude, or you're a loser. You won't even get in the ring. What kind of loser are you? So you've got these two big punches that are constantly hitting. You've got fear, shame, fear, shame. And you keep going back and forth in them. And Resistance loves it because he's just pummeling you back and forth and back and forth. So what you are saying to the artist is, hey, I'm going to tell you, the potential artist is, I'm going to tell you, you don't have to live in that const, you know, battleground of being hit back and forth and back and forth. Those are the first two punches that Resistance has. So the first thing we need to do is to explain to you what those punches are and how to best combat them, how to get in the ring and duck that fear, you know, into your nose. That fear is still going to be coming at you, but you have to duck it and to sort of use this, you know, really pummel this boxing analogy. And once Resistance understands that you're really good at, you know, rope a dope and getting away from his jab and, you know, he's not going to be able to kidney punch you when you're sitting in the corner having water, then he has to come up with some other punches. Right. And the other punches that he comes up with are, you know, the other things that you talk about in this book, which are, you know, winning the round. You think you're going to get this big, relaxing, wonderful, exhilarating thing and you don't. Yeah, you just, you just feel like, oh, geez, yeah, that's kind of. That was nice that I wrote that book and people seem to be engaged by it and yeah, there's a revenue stream that comes to me and. But this isn't the utopia I thought I was going to have when I engaged in this new artistic, creative life. So it's sort of the utopia syndrome, which is when we, we put a goal in front of ourselves and we say, once I make a billion dollars, I'm going to be happy. And, you know, there are people who have a billion dollars and they're miserable, miserable people. And that's the, Is that all there is Syndrome. The utopian syndrome comes and smacks you in the face and says, no, no, no, no, no, no. There is no moment in your life where you will achieve a utopian nirvana and feel great all the time. So I think your book is about sort of laying out, you know, the experience. Hey, this is what's going to happen to you on your journey and I'm going to give you some tools so that after, you know, this is what's going to happen, that you can plan ahead. It's almost like the doomsday preppers, right? The people who are worried about, you know, the coming whatever. There's any number of things today that can really scare any of us into thinking it's time to start stockpiling water. But the doomsday preppers, they're thinking about, instead of this utopian endpoint, they're thinking of a dystopian endpoint. But what they're doing is they are planning for this dystopian inevitability in such a way that they're thinking about their energy sources, their food sources, their water sources, their minimum viable meals, all that kind of stuff. And what you're doing is laying out a utopian prepper for the creative person. And so what you're doing is a lot of different things, right? And they're all equally important to communicate to the reader as quickly and as clearly as possible. And right now, it's still murky, right? It's still a little bit murky about what it is you're going to teach these people, but it's a lot closer than it was in your first draft. Now, your first draft had all the micro detail of your vision. Tim's vision for this book you really nailed, I think, the micro. And you've got all kinds of really terrific stuff and a lot of great advice for the, you know, the creative person who's facing shame and fear right now. So basically, all stories, all books are about change. They're about teaching people how to change their behavior to make their lives more meaningful. And that's what your book is about, is to teach people who want to be creative how to change their behavior so that the opportunity to be creative will present itself, so that once they do, they will find a meaningful experience. But you're also saying, hey, be careful. Now, I'm just going to tell you right up front, when you get to Kansas, there's going to be a big sort of dip. And Seth Godin wrote a book called the Dip. And it's about that moment in time when things kind of hit the bottom for you. It's called the Belly of the Beast in the Hero's Journey that Joseph Campbell. And it's that moment when you just, oh, man, I did all this work and this is all I got. Was it really worth it? So globally, I think you're really close to a really nice beginning, middle and end for your book. The beginning of your book is explaining the Problem, Right. It's explaining the problem in a. In a very compelling, interesting way that your reader, your potential reader is going to read your introduction like we read Malcolm. Glad. The introduction to the Tipping Point and say, tell me more. Oh, my gosh, really? You're going to teach me how to create something that is viral phenomenon that people are going to fall in love with? Let me. Let me know more. And what you want at the end of your, your introduction, your beginning hook is for your reader to go, oh, my gosh, he just completely explained all of my anxieties about creating stuff, and he's going to teach me how to overcome my reluctance to be creative. Tell me more, Tim. What's the next thing I have to know? Your introduction, obviously, is crucial because it's not only going to tell your reader, it's going to tell you, Tim, how to structure the rest of your book. I think you're on the right track, but I'm not sure that it's. It's completely gelling yet. The other thing that I think is worth going into now to talk about is just the nature of your draft of your introduction. What's really compelling about Gladwell is that he uses little micro stories in order to illustrate his points and then explain what the story meant after he's told them a really cool story. So the story structure that Gladwell uses is the same thing as the five commandments of storytelling. So when he tells at the very beginning of the introduction of the Tipping Point, and forgive me if I muddle along here, it's been a couple of, you know, years since I really analyzed it. But he starts with the Hush Puppy story, right? And the Hush Puppy story is all of a sudden Hush Puppies became extremely popular. They were about. They were on, you know, on life support as a. As a shoe company. And then all of a sudden, they're selling hundreds of hundreds of thousands of these Hush Puppies and they can't get enough of them. How did that happen? So the inciting incident in the introduction of the Tipping Point is Hushpuppies have exploded. Why? So that is causal inciting incident, but we don't know what the cause is. So he uses the mystery of the inciting incident to drive you into the rest of the book. I think as he explains it, what happened was really cool kids in the East Village started to wear Hush Puppies ironically. And once the cool kids in the East Village of Manhattan started wearing Hush Puppies, the really cool people in midtown Manhattan that run the fashion magazines started to notice and Then they started putting Hush Puppies into their print ads and advertising. And all of a sudden, before we knew it, people, you're seeing Hush Puppies all the time. People. I gotta get with some of those Hush Puppies.

And so he basically lays out the entire thesis of the book that there are mavens, influencers and salesmen who all come together and can push something from obscurity into mass culture. And he does that in a very, very interesting, fascinating way in a very short amount of space. Now, the reason why I'm saying this to you, that you don't do that. You don't really. You're not really telling a story. You're explaining, you're explaining the results of a story, not the story. Do you know what I mean? So you're saying, a few years ago I felt really terrible and I didn't know why. And that's not a bad introduction. But then you have to tell the story. And instead of telling the story, you tell the results of the story. Let me try and be more clear.

I'm going to pull up your document. So you begin. The very first sentence of your introduction is, it came as a huge shock to me. And that is extremely unspecific. What is it? Okay, you know, the thing you have to remember is that specificity is your friend talking about how long your shoelaces are is kind of interesting. Like, what does his shoelaces have to do with anything? Or, you know, Malcolm Gladwell using Hush Puppies. What does Hush Puppies have to do with viral stuff? Right. But it's because he's very, very specific about the storytelling that it attracts you because it has this inherent. I have no idea where he's going with this. And then you, you know, you write. I was sitting in my office having worked on this project for months, and now that it had huge success, there was no joy. What project? I know you get into it later, but you gotta, you gotta be very specific very quickly and use. Think of what is the inciting incident of my introduction. You could, you know something, I will teach you to Be Rich was a book that no one had any idea, had any popular, you know, nobody, nobody had ever heard. I mean, you could begin. It was like nobody had ever heard of Ramit Sethi and nobody had ever heard of his book until blank. I'm just, I'm, you know, spitballing right now. But my point is, is that you use suck the reader in with a really compelling inciting incident, story driven thing.

Okay.

And then your turning point of that story is going to say, I should have been over the moon happy, but I was in the biggest. The success of this project actually stuck me in the biggest funk of my life. Whether or not that's true, I don't know. But you need to turn the story. That's why I call it. That's why we call it the turning point. When the value of the story shifts from one to another. This is the moment when the value begins to shift. So the value at the start of your little mini story is success to failure. So what you believe would bring you happiness. Your utopian vision turned out to be dystopian, okay? And that when you're really super specific, people like me or anybody else who's listening to this, they will say, oh, my gosh, that's exactly what happened to me.

And once that happens and that clicks in the reader's mind, they're going to say, oh, my gosh, he just told my story through his story. I wonder what else he has to tell me. And that's how you hook a reader, by telling your story as specifically as possible. Because you want them to think about, you know, meeting. I'm sorry, I'm mispronouncing his name. Is it Rahmet Ramit? Ramit. Okay. So when you met Ramit or when you met Dan Pink or when you started, you know, your. Your marketing company, they want to kind of be in the room when you meet those people. I remember you told me a story, and this might be the story to lead with. You told me a story where you had to take Amtrak and you had Dan Pink's. You were hounding Dan Pink so much that he eventually said, okay, Tim.

I've got 45 minutes. At 9am you come to my house, we'll have coffee. You tell me your thing. We'll take it from there. And so you finally got him to give you 45 minutes or 30 minutes. And so you have been planning to get Dan Pink to work with him for so long, and he finally got the meeting. You're like, now's my time. Knew all your preparation, all of your hard work, everything that you had put forth was leading to getting somebody like Dan Pink to take you seriously. And he did. And he said, okay, get on the train. So you get on the train. And all you did on that train from the minute you got in the train was to review over and over again what you were going to say in those 45 minutes. And you got there and you sat down with him and you said to yourself, you Know what? I don't know if this is going to work, but I'm just going to do it. And you sat there and you drew grass for him, and you talked, and he couldn't get a word in edgewife. And I think his wife was there, and she was looking at you like you're a madman. And then you finished, and he said, okay, let's do it. Let's do it all. And that was not what you were expecting him to say. You were expecting him to say, you know what, Tim, this is really interesting. Let me take it under consideration. Let me talk to my wife here, and we'll get back to you in a few days. And then you thought you were. But when he committed in the room, you got a yes in the room. You were really happy until you got back on the train. And then you're like, oh, shit, now I got to do all this work.

So something like that is very specific because we're walking with you. We're going to the train. We're on the phone call with. We're in the email loop. We're, you know, we're drinking the coffee with Dan Pink. You tell all the things that are really fascinating about Dan Pink, where he came from. This is a guy that you want to be in business with. He's the dream client because, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, I've been. I was thinking about when you were saying that, because I've also been listening to Malcolm Gladwell's podcast.

Yeah.

And I keep thinking, like, he's so good at, like, the way that he describes, like, the people that he's talking to. And a different thing that I thought of was in Stephen King's On Writing, in the epilogue, he tells the story of getting hit by.

Oh, right. Oh, man.

Yeah. And you remember how, like, he talks about how he was laying on the side of the road and the guy that hit him was, like, when he woke up, the guy that hit him was just sitting there with, like, his cane across his, like, his legs. Like, he was describing him. And it could have been a character out of one of his books.

Yeah.

You know, the way that he described him. And so I think, I mean, that's what's missing from the stories I'm telling in my nonfiction is I'm not telling them as if they were fiction.

You know, that's exactly right.

Writing them in the same way.

That's exactly right. And the thing to remember about telling his story is that. Hey, can take your time. Take your time. You don't have to get.

You're giving me the same advice.

It's just like, I should know this by now.

No, no, I mean, I do the same thing. And usually what I'll do is my first draft is. So I basically pummeled down all of the turning points of the story. And I say, and then this happened and this happened, and this happened, and this happened. And then.

I'll take a step back and I'll take the first event and I'll craft something that uses that event as the story event for, you know, a 900 word piece. And you really get done. I mean, this Stephen King, you're mentioning that thing in his book that immediately went right back into my brain. And I remember that piece so clearly because he always takes his time. Stephen King can set up like no one. He takes his time. He unpeels the banana very slowly. And usually what will happen is you'll write something very expansive that's a very intricate movement. And then you can cut. You can. When you. Then you cut it to the bone. When you cut it to the bone, you end up with. It's almost like coffee that sits in the pot for nine hours because you have forgot to turn it off. And then you have that really rich, thick tar at the bottom. And that little. That rich tar is the equivalent for the reader of this intense, incredible story in 500 words. That's Gladwell, that's Stephen King. That's, you know, all the great Michael Lewis can really do that, too. Fantastic nonfiction writer. He wrote Moneyball, you know, Liars, Poker, and on and on and on. Michael Lewis is one of the great craftspeople at work today. And you can just read. When you read Michael Lewis or Mal, it feels as if he's taught. He's telling you. He's literally talking to you. He's telling you a story so well that you feel as if he's sitting across from you and you're listening. You're not even reading, you're listening. And the trick to doing that is draft after draft after draft after draft, doing a very, you know, intense, detailed, long thing. And then slowly you boil it down so that each sentence has a really important telling detail that gives a vision to the reader. So anyway, simply, that's what you want to lead with in your introduction. And the great thing is that you have a million of those stories because you're a creative person. You've done a million projects. And being a marketing person is a creative thing, too. A lot of people think, oh, well, that was my business stuff. And it's not really that creative, really. No. Getting the big client is a creative process. You have to make a plan to get the. To get the client. You don't just wing it. If you get 45 minutes with Dan Pink, you're not gonna wing it. You're not gonna go in there and say, hey, I really like your stuff. I really like to work with you. I could do a lot of good stuff for you. No, you tell them specifically what your plan is. This is a lot of mistakes that people make is that they worry about, oh, well, you know, if I go in and I. And I give my best stuff, then they'll just steal it and do it themselves with it. But the exact opposite is true, because when you're very specific and you. And you give graded, you know, you lay out a plan. Anybody can have a plan. Executing the plan is the hard part. But laying out a great plan is really important, and that's storytelling anyway.

So.

Okay, so.

Do you have, like, more feedback beyond the opening story, or is that so important that it kind of threaded after that?

It's really that important that if you nail the opening story and it resonates, then what you're going to decide. The one hesitancy I have is, is how far do you want to take this book? Because just dealing with shame and fear is a pretty big slice of the pie to go into the is that all there is syndrome. You know, that is going to be. Yeah, you know, it probably work because you are. What? Okay, this is getting more and more clear to me as we talk about it. But it seems to me that the problem that creative people have and those. I mean, people who want to be more creative, the problem that they have is that they hit that dip. That is that all there is thing. Right? And they say to themselves, you know, I don't like going there. I don't like that moment when I've really busted my ass and the thing has actually worked and it doesn't give me the satisfaction that I really wanted. I don't like that feeling. So you know what? I'm just not gonna stick, you know, get in there anymore. Everything that I have is going perfectly well. Why am I gonna stick my neck out again to do another project so that at the end of it I can feel bad that it's not as great as I thought it would be? I think that's what's stops people. A lot of people. I think a lot of people have been creative in their life and they have reached some level of success. But it doesn't give them the peace and hope and happiness that they initially thought it would. So your book is like, hey, dude, you are not unique. This is what happens to everybody. And so I'm going to initially tell you this story of how it happened to me and how I was in the dumps because it didn't work out in the way I thought it would, and how I overcame that and how I, you know. And then the big payoff at the end of your book is the more creative efforts that you do, the less disturbing it is that you don't feel completely fulfilled. It makes sense at the end of your projects to be little bit sad because you know that process is over. You've got a new project ahead. Doesn't mean that it wasn't worth going through. It just means you're a little bit sad. It's like, you know, when you go to summer camp and you meet new friends and you leave and you're sad. Doesn't mean that wasn't worth going to summer camp and meeting new people. This meant a little sad because you're transitioning into a new project, a new thing.

Well, and what. What I feel like I've seen is, you know, through my own stuff and working with other people is like, when you're at level one, you think, if I can just get to level two. And then once you're at level two, you think, well, if I could just get to level three. And then what happens is you eventually get to the top and you realize there is no more levels, and I still don't have it. So where do I go from here? And my favorite story of that is Elizabeth Gilbert with her book Eat, Pray, Love. And she did this fantastic TED Talk where she talks about trying to create again after the book, after writing a book. Like, no other work that she ever does will probably ever come close to selling or having the success of Eat, Pray, Love. So how do you continue to create? Oh, yeah, Yeah, I had that moment.

Yeah.

You know, I had that moment where, like, I woke up a couple years ago one morning and realized I had everything I ever wanted. But I was, like, 34. You know, like, it's like, okay, well, I don't want to keep that to your stop.

But, Tim.

Yeah, well, I mean, but you. But see, that's the thing is that, like. And we even talk about people who, like, publicly tell a different story than what's really going on, because they want people to think, like, oh, they're still in the slog, or, oh, they're the, they're the struggling artists still. Well, and even Michelangelo did that where like he like on purpose told the story that he was a starving artist when he wasn't, like he was a, in today's money, a millionaire. And Jeff tells that story. And real artists don't start. And so I like reaching the point where you have everything you want is like you can get there and then you have to keep going. And so what's it look like to even move past that? And so I think what I like, what I want to do is show that roadmap so that at each place it's not surprising and you know what to do with the place that you're at. Because everybody thinks if I just get my first publishing deal, then I'll have made it. And it's like, you'll get that. You'll go out for drinks with your friends and then you'll come home and then now what? You know, like, and it does. And so it is, it is that like, like you were saying, it's not that utopian thing, but it is a constant succession of those that are different, you know, anyway. And to me, each level has its own surprises. You know, like when people, people think if I just start writing, I'll feel fulfilled. But then they realize they like go back and read it and their writing sucks and they're like, well, now what do I do?

Right?

Because this is awful. Right? So, yeah. And again, my, my belief is like, you can do this in a way where it's an enjoyable process. It's not a painful process, it's not a depressing process. It is just the process.

Yes.

And if you, you know, if you bring in healthy expectations and healthy practices, you can actually enjoy even the parts that are sucky.

Right.

They can be part of the enjoyment of the process. You know, I was talking with my friend about the how like we're gonna have self driving cars in the next 10 to 20 years or whatever. And we were joking around about like, you know, could I just, you know, how old do my kids have to be before I can let them Uber to school without me having to drive them? And you know, we're just joking because like coming up in a couple of weeks here, when my now my kids are going to be in different schools. So I've got like a 20 minute drive to one school, then a 20 minute drive to the other school, then a 20 minute drive back into town to my office. So I got like an hour in the car every morning. And this, you know, I Spent most of my adult life in a place where I was three minutes from my office, and that was the only place I have went. So we were laughing about, like, you know, and then we're actually, well, could we get like a carpool thing and all this kind of stuff? Because I hate sitting in the car and I hate driving. But then I'm like, yeah, but, like, that's where I have the conversations with my kids that I don't have anywhere else. And that's where, like, we play stupid car games or we listen to Jim Gaffigan the comedian. You know, like, it's like kind of a shitty thing to have to sit in a car for an hour every morning, but at the same time, like, it's an enjoyable thing. And I think that's how we can approach each of these processes where I see so many artists, like, suffering for their work, and it just doesn't have to be that way.

Well, that's. That's absolutely true. And all of the research, psychological research, which has been abundant over the past 20 years, the key element to changing your behavior is environmental. Change your environment and you will change your behavior. If your environment, you know, is filled with candy and you want to stop eating candy, you're in trouble. Right? It's that simple. Yeah. You know, just don't have any candy in your house, and chances are you're not going to go eat a lot of candy because then you'll have to get in the car to go buy it. And who wants to do that? That's what I think is so wonderful about your. Your project, is that you give very practical, specific, prescriptive advice about changing your environment to change your behavior. And that is right on the money in terms of the scientific literature. And it won't be difficult for you to back up all the things that you prescribe in your book. The tricky part is to make the prescriptive advice, the changing your environment part, interesting to the reader. You know, this. This could be a, you know, a typical how to book where you give the how to how Tim Grohl changed his behavior by changing his environment. And for what that is, that's okay. What could be really even better is to explain why people are feeling this way, why they need to change their behavior, why it's important to create, why it will make. Give them greater meaning in their life and not for the reasons that they think it will. That will be your ironic ending. The payoff of your book is not shipping and getting a, you know, check for the New York Times Bestseller from your publishing company. That's nice. The payoff is the work itself is to understand that what you want and what you need are two completely things, completely different things. What every human being needs to do is create. That is why you are here. Whether you are creating a plan to fix the plumbing in your house or creating a sculpture, it's the same part of the soul that works in all those cases. So your book is about, hey, don't do it for the want, do it for the need. Because guess what? We all need to create. It is not magical. It is part of being a human being. Don't deny that part of yourself.

So where do I go? So I'm struggling with. So you've given me some specific advice about the specificity of my stories and rewriting some of those. Where do you feel like I'm at with the overall, like plan and structure for the book? Because that's a bigger, bigger thing there too.

The planning and structure of the book is coming along, but I don't think it's going to be razor sharp to you until you nail the opening story. And it doesn't have to be. I'm talking about the Tim on the train that you know, the story of how you through fighting this horrible monster, fear and shame, you know, staying away from the video games, throwing away the console and actually getting in there every day and getting pummeled by fear and shame. And yet doing the work anyway. You're gritting your teeth and fighting it out. You eventually got to the point where you got the opportunity to, you know, land a whale for your business. And here you were and you landed the whale. And my gosh, you know, it was going to be exhilarating because you finally beat the shit out of resistance and you got what you wanted. You got the number one New York Times best selling business writer to say you were worthy and that he wanted your advice. Holy crap. And then, then you were like, yeah, whatever.

And so at the end of that story, you say to everybody who's reading this book, so how did I get over that? Well, it didn't. It wasn't easy. It took me another 10 years or another five years to figure out why I felt like crap. Yeah, you know what? Instead I did. I tried to find other things that would bring me happiness. And guess what? I had the same feeling at the end of that too. So the reason why I'm writing this book is to explain to you. I used to think it was just me. I was just the loser who couldn't enjoy My own success. And here I was, you know, just this fraud guy who couldn't even enjoy his life. I'd set these goals, I'd reached the goals, and then I couldn't even enjoy it. What was the point? And then I realized after doing this over and over again and being with all these other people who told me the same thing, holy crap, this is just the way it is. Maybe if I looked at this process in a different way, I could actually enjoy it. Maybe I didn't have to be a miserable bastard. Maybe I actually could enjoy the creative process. Right? So that is underneath that story is your theme. You don't have to blatantly say to the. To the reader, hey, you don't have to be a miserable bastard to be creative. You tell the story of how you became a miserable bastard. You didn't like that feeling. And so what you did is you changed your behavior so that you no longer felt that way. Now you understand the creative process in a way that doesn't bring you into a pit of despair. When you finish a project, you know you're going to feel bad.

Because you've experienced that before. So when you know that you're. It's like when Winston Churchill told everybody in Britain, hey, guys, we are up against it. We're gonna lose a lot of people, and we might even lose our country. But you know what? We will never surrender. You know what people did? They said, all right, I'm in. He didn't say, oh, we're going to beat Hitler. It's just going to take some time. And, you know, if we do, he said, you know what? We could very well be destroyed because nobody's coming to help us, and we're the only ones standing up against this bastard. But you know what? We're not going to surrender, because that's not what we do. We don't surrender. We're going to fight to the last man, the last child, and the last woman on this beautiful island that we call home that inspired that nation to do something extraordinary. There's a movie out now that I can't wait to see about Dunkirk, which is when you talk about the belly of the beast. The entire British, you know, army and navy was cornered, and ordinary British citizens got in their fishing boats and they went and they got those soldiers and they brought them home. They saved the free world. So my point is that Churchill told them the truth. We are in a fight. We are going to suffer. Get ready, guys. I'm going to be leading the charge. Come with me and they all did. And what you're saying to people who want to be creative, it's going to be hard, guys. But you know what? Enjoy it, too. You're going to feel bad at the end of a creative process. No matter if you got $5 million or nobody read your book. You're gonna feel bad because guess what? You finished something, and now you have to create something else. And there's always a dip. And you're gonna feel it now, now that you know that when you hit that dip, it's not gonna hurt as much because you're gonna go, yeah, yeah, Tim told me about this. So that's what you need in that introduction. And then after you get it done, your five stages and all that stuff will even sort itself out even better. It will flow a lot more naturally based upon the story that you tell, because what you're going to end up doing is you'll find little moments in your personal story that you can use to invigorate each section of your middle build. This is the great thing about the Big Idea book, is that what you do is you boil down your coffee at the very beginning, and you have Instead of a 25% hook, you have a 10% hook. Then you have an 80% middle build, which is the meat and potatoes of, you know, your prescriptive plan. And it's a progressive meat and potatoes. It's not just, you know, get a can of oil, buy a lawnmower, check the spark plug. It's a progressive build, right? And your climax, I mean, your all is lost moment is right at the moment of success. And it's ironic, of course. And then your ending payoff is, guess what? Start the next book. Steve Pressfield has a great story in the war of Art, where he had a mentor. Steve was living in his van down by the river. He would go see his mentor every day and show him his pages. And he finally finished his novel, and he showed his mentor, and he said, look here, I finally finished. And the mentor says, hey, congratulations. Start the next one right now.

Because he knew that dip, he wanted Steve to understand fight the dip by starting something before you finish something else. That's another trick, having multiple projects at different stages of development. Like right now, we've been working on your novel for two years, right? But now that your novel, you're, you know, you're doing your rewrite, you're not quitting creating after you finish your novel. And you wisely said to yourself, I want to do this nonfiction thing, too. Should I wait till I finish my novel before I do the. No, you started working on that too. And you can go back and forth between them, and that's another way to beat the shit out of resistance is to sucker punch them. When they think you're working on another project, go to another one. So the bottom line that your question is, what you need to do is really focus on that introductory story. It's your story. It's extremely specific. It's not vague. When you say, I played video games all day, I don't want it. I want to know what kind of video game you played. Was it World of War Warcraft or what was it, you know, Pac Man? I don't know what video game you're playing. Be specific. You know, you're like blowing up some gork or whatever. I don't even know what video games I always stayed away from because I knew I would get addicted to them. So I've never played them. But I want to know that, you know, I want. Set the scene for me. Show me what you do. I mean, did you lock your office door and say, I'm in a meeting. I can't, you know, hold all my calls. What did you do? How did you sneak away? How did you get it, you know, hide it from your wife? How did you hide it from your kids? That's interesting stuff. People want to know that they can understand the moment when, you know, you set your alarm for 2 o' clock in the morning so you can go downstairs and raid the refrigerator. You know, some people do that and it's shameful and you feel terrible when you're doing it, but it's also, you know, it gives you a little thrill. By not doing your work, you're thumbing your nose at what you're supposed to be doing. Okay. Do you know.

Okay.

Do you know what you're gonna do?

Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna. Yeah, I feel, I feel comfortable with what I got to do next. So I'll rewrite that again because it really sounds like. And it feel, you know, talking to other friends of mine that have been working on their books recently, it's like the big thing in nonfiction is to nail the introduction because then you know what the rest of the book is.

So. Well, there's a reason why book publishers. Yeah, I mean, there's a reason why book publishers will commission nonfiction, but they won't commission fiction unless you're a best selling writer. Because you can write a proposal and a proposal will tell you what the book is going to be in a very specific way. The publisher feels confident that if the person can write a great proposal, they can probably write the book.

Okay, well I will get to work on that and then we will reconvene. Okay, thanks for listening to this episode of the StoryGrid podcast. For everything StoryGrid related, check out storygrid.com make sure you pick up a copy of the book and sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss anything happening in the Story Grid universe. If you'd like to check out the show notes for this episode, like the introduction to the book that I wrote, along with some of the other notes that we discussed in this episode. All of that is@storygrid.com podcast if you would like to reach out to us, you can find us on Twitter torygrid. Lastly, if you would like to support the show, you can do that by telling another author about the show and by visiting us on itunes and leaving a rating and review. Thanks for subscribing and being a part of our work here at StoryGrid. We will see you next week.