Hello and welcome to the Story Grid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better

writer. I'm your host Tim Graal and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a

story that works. Joining me shortly as Sean Coyne, he is a creator of Story Grid, the author of

the book Story Grid and an editor with over 25 years experience.

You're listening to the 115th episode of the podcast, and I get feedback from a lot of you

talking about how I'm so honest and open and, you know, brave, like sharing my writing,

and we've talked about some of that on the

show before. But I'm going to be honest with you, this was the first episode. I almost cut

something out of it. I've been really struggling with the nonfiction book I'm working on

and figuring out the right inciting incident at the beginning of the book. And so Sean and I start talking through that.

And then right at the end of the episode, I kind of hit this place of vulnerability

that really kind of scared me.

And so after the episode, I actually thought seriously about cutting it out.

But my promise to myself and to you is always that I just

leave the podcast as is all the dirty stuff and all the messy stuff gets left in because that's

what it's like to be a writer so I hope it's a helpful episode for you I know that all of us

as we write are facing down our own demons,

and this is definitely one of mine. So as you hear me struggle through it, hopefully it will

be helpful for you as well. So let's jump in and get started. So Sean, this week I wanted to

switch gears a little bit because as a lot of the listeners know, I'm working on two books at the same time, which I don't recommend anybody ever do in their life.

So as I continue to work on the Threshing, another book that we've talked about off and on on the podcast that I'm

working on is a book about the creative process. And it started as an idea, geez, almost two

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