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 is 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 know, I've gotten emails from time to time

that I should take out the part at the beginning of this intro where it says I'm a struggling

writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works because, you know, I've come a long way,

it's been three years. But I think more than ever, I feel like I have these moments more than ever

where I struggle. And this is moments more than ever where I struggle.

And this is one of those episodes where I'm just really struggling with the novel, where to go

next, and if I should even keep working on this thing.

So I take that to Sean and he talks me through it and we come to an interesting place.

So let's jump in and get started.

So Sean, if you go into the story

grid archive of episodes, the past few episodes, you'll see August 17th, we came out with

when is the book done? So that was based on a question from a friend of mine.

Then we did one where we talked about Sean's Dark Night of the Soul and the project you're working on.

Then we skipped a week and then we talked about how to write a great villain.

And we talked about the nature of evil and that kind of stuff.

And, you know, one thing I'm curious if any listeners picked up on is the fact that I was

actively coming up with episode ideas that did not involve my own writing. And we ended up

skipping a week because I was at this point where I just

was freaking out about this book. And every time I have tried to work on it for like the past month,

...