Why Can't I Finish My Book?

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 a creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book StoryGrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. Doing this podcast for me is a little strange because obviously it's in front.

Of a lot of people.

So anytime I am talking about something or, you know, discussing my writing or discussing story grid ideas, you know, I'm aware that you are sitting there listening sometime in the future. And sometimes it feels very like it's hard to hide. And this has been one of those.

Weeks where for a few weeks now.

On the podcast, I've been hiding. And I always wonder, like, can they tell when they're listening? Can they tell that I'm hiding? And so this week I come clean.

And I talk about what I've been hiding from, and I really just talk.

About, you know, why I'm having so much trouble finishing up this book. I'm like, inches from the finish line and I cannot bring myself to cross. So I decided to talk about it and come clean, mainly because I felt.

Like I was being very transparent and all of you knew what was going.

On anyway, but it was helpful for me, and hopefully as I work through it and ask the questions, it will be helpful for you as well as you try to finish up your project. So let's jump in and get started.

So, Sean, I've been putting this off for a few weeks, and this morning, as soon as I woke up, I thought, I know what I need to.

Talk about on the podcast today.

And you can probably guess, but I'm gonna say it anyway. So I've been going through the book and I've only gotten about halfway through reworking all of the scenes. And I bet I've worked on it a total of three times in the past eight weeks. And I don't know, I mean, I'm having some, like, overall, like, I feel gray about. I was talking to Candice about it last night and I was like, I. I feel like all of my work right now is kind of tinted and gray. I'm just in that, like, churning out stuff mode instead of working on new exciting things mode. But I just, every time I sit down to write, I feel or work on a scene, I just feel like it is the most. I don't know, I just can't do it. And I keep coming up with other things that are more important to work on. And then we set the date for publishing next February. So I'm like, I'm not in a hurry.

But then every time I work on.

It, I feel like it's harder to work on it. And then there's like, one scene. It was the scene where, like, before she burns down the tower, where there's like, a gun involved. And we decided there can't be a gun. And it took me, like, two or three tries to rewrite that scene in a way that I felt like was half decent without there being a gun, you know? And so it just feels like I'm not back to where I was, where I'm like, I don't want to throw away the novel, which was where I was back, you know, six, four or five months ago or something. But it's just like, I just. I don't know.

I'm not working on it.

So one is, I need to admit to the fact that I'm not working on it and that I keep talking about all this other stuff on the podcast, thinking this week I'm actually going to work on it, and I'm going to turn something in. And then I'm like, oh, I haven't. We're going to go over the math of Storygrid this week, you know, So I don't really know what do the episode on other than, like, just start with. I'm just feeling a lot of resistance to it. And I keep, like, today I'm going to work on it. Oh, wait, I've got this other thing that's more important. So that's where I'm at with the novel right now.

Okay, well, it's not. The good news is that you're not suffering a unique malady.

That's good.

Yeah. So, you know, it's. It's funny because I'm. I'm in a similar position. You know, I'm working on a book with. With someone. And it got to the point where we. He lives quite a ways away from me, so we decided to meet halfway and we got a third party actually in the room, and we sat there for a full day, and we had the third party basically grill us a bunch of questions to refocus our energies to find out, you know, those essential things of why we're doing this thing in the first place. And so sometimes it's worth considering. It's kind of like breaking your perspective. So, for example, if you're. When you're a Little kid, you do things like this and it's fun, right? So like, say you're sitting on your porch and you see your neighbor pushing his lawnmower. And, you know, you're just a little kid, so you're goofing around, you go, I wonder if I can get that, that guy within, you know, the measure between my, my thumb and my forefinger. So you put up your thumb and your forefinger and you sort of like move the thumb and forefinger in a way so that you can see your next door neighbor and he's like, sort of in between your thumb and forefinger and then you sort of crush him. You know, it's kind of fun. And you think about, oh, you know, in a different world, I could just sort of snatch and crush that guy. And that's, it's funny, but that's the way you sort of have to approach these moments of being stuck is how can I change my perception the way I'm looking at this problem? First of all, you need to define the problem. And the problem that you're facing is, yeah, you're resistant, you're reluctant, you're not motivated, you're not excited. It's a little bit. It's drudgery work. You're not sort of waking up in the morning and going, woo, I can fix that fourth paragraph in my 23rd scene today. And that's natural and it makes sense. So that's when resistance, as Steve says, this is where it redoubles its efforts, right? Because you're super close to finishing this project. Like, it's. No.

That's what I keep telling myself. I'm like, just get it done.

Like, yeah, I mean, that's important, but it's also, it's not helpful. It doesn't really work that way because you can't just get something done that has a lot of personal meaning and value to you, right? So it's not like, just take the garbage out. You know, that's, that's easy to get that done and it's over with. So an unpleasant task is what you want to get done. This isn't an unpleasant task. What it's becoming is, you know, sort of this, this psychological barrier starting to, you know, rise. And the barrier is, you know, what we need to do is sort of sit on the porch, the proverbial, you know, the metaphorical porch, and sort of come up with a new way of looking at the project. So this is what that third party person did for me and my writing partner. He sat in the room and he acted as this vehicle that would help us change our perspective about the project. Now, he refused to read any of the material that we had written because he didn't really care. Right. Nor should he care, because his job, and he's a specialist in doing this, his job is to get people to finish their work. So he has some tools that he uses to get people to finish their work. And the first thing he says is, you know, what is the objective and what is your overall purpose? And those are kind of weird words because you go, well, isn't objective and purpose the same thing? And they're really not. So an objective is sort of taking the garbage out because it's starting to smell in your kitchen. So that's getting over a task. A purpose is to have a nice home. That is, that fortifies everyone who lives there as a place of comfort and safety so that they feel comfortable and happy and are able to be their best person while they're in the home. That's what you have, a home. That's why you take the garbage out. So the purpose of having a home is to provide comfort and safety to the people who live there so that they can achieve their life goals. So let's just for fun, let's just do this for you. So what do you think your global purpose as a person is generally, like.

In relation to the book or just as a person?

Just as a person.

Oh, Lord, I don't know. Well, that's a really big question.

Well, it is, but it's a very big question. But it's something. I'm like, what, 10 or 15 years older than you are, and you don't necessarily have a perfect answer to that question, nor do I. But I have a general answer to it. And I'll share it with you and see if this is any help for you to sort of form your own thing. Because I can't tell you what your purpose is. But through the long, hard drudgery of my life and through all the wonderful things in my life, I come down to sort of this single higher value that whenever I get stuck, I think about this value and what I hold to be the most important thing in my life. And that is the dual nature of creation and destruction. So when I get stuck and I don't want to do something, I will think about that and I'll go, well, what is my purpose? And my general purpose, if somebody were to really insist on asking me, is at the end of my life, if someone asked me the question, did you leave more here did you create more than what you consumed on earth? Do you think you're in the positive in the creation zone, or do you think you're in the destruction zone? And so that one concept, and my answer to that, my wish, my global purpose and goal in life is to answer, yes, I left more than I took. And I think that's the dual nature of reality is that there's these constant forces. You know, we have order and chaos. Now order can be constructive and it can be creative and it can be wonderful, but it also, too much order can be destructive, right? Tyranny. Chaos can be destructive. It can be a tornado that comes out of nowhere that wipes you out. It also can be very creative. You know, it's about springtime where I live and any day now all these buds on the top of the trees are going to bloom into leaves and it happens magically on like one day. So you'll wake up in the morning and you'll notice something's a little weird. And then you notice, oh my God, the leaves are out. So chaos, nobody knows what makes that work. Chaos creates too. So that's sort of the 55 year old view of life from my point of view is can I look at my life at the end and say, did I create more than I took? Meaning destroyed, consumed. So when I get stuck, like when I was in that meeting and this man made me actually say this out loud, it was really clarifying to me. It was like having my forefinger and my thumb on that, that person, right? I could say, oh, okay, well that's my purpose. Okay, that's a pretty cool purpose. And I think globally, as a humanist, meaning the believing in human beings as forces of creation and goodness generally, that's the way I define humanism is, is to believe in the power of the individual human being as capable of creating something that has never existed before. I think for me that's sort of my. If I have a pyramid of value, that's the thing at the very tip top, you know, that's the top. Creation, destruction. So knowing that, then I could say, well, is my not completing this book, is that contributing to my global purpose or not? Well, it's not, right? So let me come up with my objective. My objective would be then, geez, I want to finish this damn book. Because then I'm going to add creative energy into the world instead of sort of having this thing sitting on my hard drive as this big weight that will go into the ether. If, you know, I get hit by a truck, be Better for me to get it out there so that if I do get hit by a truck, at least it's out there before I die. All right, so that's good to know. So what do you think? Do you think your global purpose on Earth is similar to that?

Yeah, I could get on board with that.

Great. Okay, so you believe that at the end of your days that if someone says, hey, Tim, man, geez, you know, before you go, I just want to go, wow, the book launch thing was great. The story grid was great. Those novels you work, you know, you really worked hard on, thank you for leaving those. You know, your. Your sons are really great kids and really nice people. So thank you for, you know, changing the world for the better while you were here. And then you can go, hey, no problem. Thank you. And you leave. And wherever you go is wherever you go, but at least, you know, you left a little something behind. So that's a pretty great purpose, and I think a lot of people get on with that. So if that's your global purpose, then the problems of Scene 27 and ACT, they don't really seem that large, and they can be problems that are, you know, much smaller than they once were. And the fact is, is that the creative act requires blue collar effort. 90%, 99% of the time. You know, we don't live in the flow state while we're creating. We live in it occasionally, which just, you know, which is sort of the carrot that keeps sucking us back into putting our ass in the chair. But, you know, the professional writer and the professional book marketer and the professional editor, they know, you know, some days I'm going to be eating a lot of crap and not really feeling that great, but I'm just gonna put my nose to the grindstone. So, you know, throughout that day, you know, he started to suss out more of this problem. Okay, so if your objective is to finish this thing, set a date, you know, just give yourself a date. I don't care if you hit the date. Set a date, because setting a date is really important. So I think I. I gave you a date that you had to get me the manuscript in order to make life reasonably easy to publish this thing next February. I don't have that date off the top of my head. But you have it somewhere, right?

Yes.

Okay, so do you, do you have any global sense of where it is? What is it like August?

I don't know.

I was actually just pulling up.

Yeah, pull it up now, because now we can sort of laser focus that date. Into your mind. And that'll be a good start to sort of break this larger problem into two.

Okay, I'm almost there. So we have February 4th is when we're publishing it. Wait, this is the money one. I have the wrong one up. This is how much it's going to cost us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm glad you pulled that one up.

Okay, I have that one that's. Oh, production schedule.

Here we go.

I had production budget up.

Okay. Oh, okay, I've got. Author delivers manuscript to editor, September 3, 2019. Is that what you have?

I'm assuming I haven't changed it. Let's see the threshing.

Here we go.

Author delivers manuscript. So September 3rd. Yeah, I mean, that gives me April, May, June, July. It gives me like four and a half months.

Okay, great. So you have four and a half months. And let's say what I'm thinking, like, okay, that gives.

I don't even have to work on it to like August 23rd.

Oh, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

See, that's the problem.

The amateur does.

Yeah, exactly.

The professional is going to do what we're going to do here and we're going to figure it out. So you have four. And I know that you have some plans to go away at some point. I think you're going to be away for like three or four weeks, right?

Yeah, yeah.

All right. So you gotta. You gotta subtract those from that schedule. And your goal, delivering that manuscript September 3, 2019, is not to dump a bunch of problems on me. Right?

Right. This is the thing that authors often get confused. It's not dumping a massive problem on your editor that the manuscript being due to the editor. Your goal is to deliver something so great that the editor says, you know what, I'm just going to stick this thing in production. This thing is ready to go. Right. And that way you obliterate all of that anxiety about, oh, my gosh, I wonder what they're going to think of it. I hope they don't see that scene that I sort of dashed off at.

The last minute because I started on August 23rd.

Right. So if you subtract those three weeks from the four and a half months now, you've got something like three and a half months. So you know where I'm going with this. You plot out. I get up at whatever time you get up. I think you get up like me around 5 or 5:30. Then you go, you know what? I've gotta get the kids ready at 7. So from 5:30 to 6, 15. I'm gonna work, you know, on scene 27 on Monday, and on Tuesday, I'm gonna work on scene 28. And it's literally the great thing about having a rough draft, a really good, solid rough draft, because I'm going through this right now, is that I discover on each day when I sit down to do the work and I start going through the words, hey, the idiot who wrote this wasn't that bad.

This isn't as terrible as I thought it was. And in fact, what you end up doing is clarifying the messaging, clarifying the themes, and adding really good transitional interstitial tissue that will increase the narrative velocity of the story. So it's not all that exciting, though. It can. You can have moments of, oh, that's. That's pretty good. But it's. You're not going to feel like. You're going to feel like you're working at a, you know, a landscape designer. So that's what you got to do. You got to say to yourself, look, I'm a pro. I've been working on this thing for three years. I'm going to finish it. My purpose is to get this thing out. It's going to be out in February, and it's going to be the best I possibly can make it. And I'm just going to set aside the time every day I'm going to put in my calendar, and I'm not going to hit the snooze button. I'm going to get there and I'm going to get it done, and you're going to get it done, and it's going to be. By the time you deliver that in September, you're going to feel really good about it. And while you're doing that, you know, I'm going to be working on thinking about the COVID about the design, and you never know, I might be able to show you some cover images or thoughts before you're even done, which is going to give you an even better picture of what the finish line is going to look like. You're not going to magically feel like a New man on September 3rd, but you're going to feel better. You're going to feel like you've added something to the world that wasn't there before. And also, September 3rd is almost, what is it, four years of the podcast by then.

It'll be right at four years. Yep.

Yeah. So that's a pretty pretty. From zero to finished novel that is published within four years and three months. That's a pretty good track Record. So I wish I could give you a more magical formula for feeling better about yourself while you're doing the work, but it's just kind of like, you know, quit whining and just get your ass up and do the 45 minutes a day.

And if you read this version and you're like, this is unpublishable, you'll tell me you won't let me put something out into the world that's not ready just because we now have a schedule. Okay, you see what I'm asking now?

Yeah, that. That's just silly.

I don't feel like that's silly.

Well, of course I am. It's been four years, right? Have I lied to you in four years?

No.

Okay, so you are going to execute the plan that we put in place. Now, the probability of you executing the plan at perfect hundred percent is pretty low, but the probability of you blowing everything and destroying what we've already created is super low. Like, almost impossible. So I think the last time we talked about your book, I was very encouraging and I said, look, you've got a plan. The world that you're creating is much richer than it was before. Keep going. Enjoy adding more elements to each scene that conform with your new vision of what this world looks like. And you're doing great. So when you do deliver it to me, I have the probability that I'm going to say this is unpublishable. Much lower than ever before. So when you. You're sort of like going back to old Tim. You're thinking the way old Tim thinks. The way old Tim thinks is, oh, I hope I'm doing well. Let me wait for the third party to tell me whether I'm good enough or not. You know, deep down that you've put in the work. You know, the other. Before we got on the phone, you were talking about having a conversation with somebody and you were explaining to me what their story was. And you were like, the guy didn't really know what his genre was. And in the back of my mind, I'm like, I wonder if he knows what the genre is. And then you're like, it was obviously a performance genre. And I was like, yeah, he knows this stuff backwards and forwards now. So what you're starting to do, and I'm actually writing about this in this new book with this side project, is what you're doing is you're tumbling down the subjective past. And the way we sort of navigate the world is that in the present moment, we plan for a future that's better than what we think we're living presently and it's informed by our past. So what you're doing now is you're planning for a future that you want to be better than the present, which is the future time, September 3, 2019, when you send me the manuscript. So you're planning for that time, but you're being informed by your past. But you're not listening to the past three and a half years. You're listening to the past 33 years before that, right? So the 33 years before that, you probably always thought, I'm never going to make it as a writer. This whole fiction idea is ridiculous. There's something that's driving me to do it. I'm going to have to just surrender to it. But I know deep down I'm never really going to finish it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? All that crap. But the past three and a half years you have factually change that story because you did the work necessary a to even find story grid and find me. And then you insinuated yourself into my life to the point where I'm giving you all this advice, right? And not only like, are you getting the advice, you're taking the advice. The stuff that you work wrote three and a half years ago was terrible. It did not. It did not. And I'm saying that, you know, in a nice way because everybody starts terribly. James Joyce started as a terrible writer, so did Stephen King. All right, so good for you. You started like everybody else started terribly. You weren't very good. But in three and a half years you have changed your Tim as writer story. So your own personal story has changed in three and a half years so dramatically that you still have difficulty accepting the truth, the factual truth of that chain. So what you're doing is you're tumbling back into the 33 plus years of worrying that you're not good enough. When you ask me, you're going to tell me the truth if it sucks, right? And we won't publish it, right? Because you know, I always tell you the truth. I give you my truth, which is informed by my past, which is hundreds and hundreds of books published, thousands and thousands read. So the probability of you turning in something that I'm going to say, we're not going to publish this, Tim, and you've been kidding yourself for four years is ridiculously low. And you, I understand the subconscious of you wanting to believe that, but come on, you have to know consciously that the probability of me telling you that this thing is terrible and we're not going to publish it in September is really low. Right?

Yeah, I mean, I know I just have this, like. You know, I just have these things where I think about, like, all these people that have listened to this podcast for now, it'll be four years, and then, like, they read the book and they're like, really?

Yeah. Yeah, that's gonna happen. Yeah, that's gonna happen.

And that's just where.

Yeah, sorry, your book's not for everyone. Right? It's. A lot of people are going to say, this is terrible. I didn't like it. I thought it was stupid. I mean, look at some of the reviews for the story grid on Amazon. They say things like, this guy's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's talking about. One, he needed an editor. Ha ha, ha. Right?

I've read those reviews, and every time I read them, I feel terrible. Every time I read them, I go, oh, man, I didn't reach that person. They think I. And then I start saying, well, don't they know I put 30 years of heart? You know, like, they don't care. It didn't. I did not reach them. Next. And then 80% of the reviews, 80% are people who go, this is the. This is the best story structure book. I'm not trying to, you know, tout my own. Just saying the factual information is you can't please everyone. And, yes, it's going to happen to you. And yes, people are going to say all kinds of horribly nasty things about how you were an idiot for spending all this time, blah, blah, blah, and your book sucks, and who cares? Because guess what? There are going to be plenty of people who go, wow, this is better than I could even possibly have imagined. This guy has written a story that I loved. I can't wait for the next one. And my gut feeling is that you're gonna have a probability of success of reaching those people that really enjoy the kind of book that you write and satisfy them at a very high, highly probable level because you've used the story grid to guide you. You know, what conventions and obligatory scenes that they're looking for in a labyrinth action story with a maturation plot underneath in a dystopian world. And you're delivering that to them in a unique way that nobody else has done before. You're creating a work that has never been alive before on the planet, inspired by the masters of the people who have come before you. That's called creating, Right? You're inspired by the beauty and art of work that has come before you. You use that as inspiration to guide you in your own creation. And you do the best you can. And that's called being a professional. And what's also called being a professional is saying to yourself, yeah, I can read all the bad reviews until I'm blue in the face and I can really enjoy feeling terrible about myself. But you know what? The fact is, I got 79% five star reviews. 79% five star reviews for me. You know what? That's a pretty big win. And you know that's going to motivate me to write something else. So that's what's going to happen for you. And you just have to. You have to shrug off the people that you can't reach. And their own resistance is the only thing that's motivating a person to write a terribly nasty review that is unhelpful and not even signing their name to it. What kind of person does that? Is that the kind of person you really care about anyway? They won't even put their name on the review. So the average person reads a review with nobody's name on it and they go, oh, that's. I'll just discount that crap. That's stupid. What kind of idiot spends that amount of time writing a review and doesn't put their name on it? That's not a person I want in my life. I'm not gonna take advice from them.

Okay, I can do this.

Yeah, you will. You totally will.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. For everything Story Grid 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 or any past episodes, all of that can be found@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 Apple Podcasts 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.