Running Down a Dream
Written by Tim GrahlEdited by Shawn Coyne
A Deeply Personal Field Guide to Defeating Your Own Worst Enemy
When you dream, you envision a magical future. You have heroically slayed the dragons and unlocked the creativity and genius buried deep inside.
But how do you actually get there?
You can analyze the myths of visionary creators–artists, writers, musicians, software developers, etc that have accomplished the impossible. You’ll read about how they went for it, refused to quit, and would not be denied. But exactly how these successful creators went from being fearful dreamers to accomplished artists proves elusive. They seem to have secret sauce inside that you just don’t possess.
Running Down a Dream unflinchingly bares the naked truth behind all creations and shares the practical to-do list to take you from here to there.
The good news? You don’t have to be an Austen or a Michelangelo or an Oprah to create a work of art.
The bad news? There is no glossing over the pain, embarrassment, and financial terror necessary to contend with on your journey to mission accomplished.
More good news? What lies ahead for you is the realization of your heroic self. The run is worth it in ways you can’t yet imagine.
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A Deeply Personal Field Guide to Defeating Your Own Worst Enemy
When you dream, you envision a magical future. You have heroically slayed the dragons and unlocked the creativity and genius buried deep inside.
But how do you actually get there?
You can analyze the myths of visionary creators–artists, writers, musicians, software developers, etc that have accomplished the impossible. You’ll read about how they went for it, refused to quit, and would not be denied. But exactly how these successful creators went from being fearful dreamers to accomplished artists proves elusive. They seem to have secret sauce inside that you just don’t possess.
Running Down a Dream unflinchingly bares the naked truth behind all creations and shares the practical to-do list to take you from here to there.
The good news? You don’t have to be an Austen or a Michelangelo or an Oprah to create a work of art.
The bad news? There is no glossing over the pain, embarrassment, and financial terror necessary to contend with on your journey to mission accomplished.
More good news? What lies ahead for you is the realization of your heroic self. The run is worth it in ways you can’t yet imagine.
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“What does it really look like to succeed? Slow, painful, terrified, stumbling, humble, and persistent. Tim’s amazingly vulnerable story convinces you you’re not alone in your struggle, and shows a path through it.”
– Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, frequent TED speaker, and author of Anything Your Want
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“Full disclosure: Tim Grahl is my own secret guru for exactly the stuff that Running Down a Dream is about. My own book, The War of Art, was about the concept of self-sabotage as it afflicts us as writers and artists struggling to be our best professional selves. Tim’s book is the workingman’s tool-belt. His gift is to show us in nuts-and-bolts, no-nonsense terms exactly how to navigate this crazy life and how to actually Get Our Stuff Done. Indispensable!”
– Steven Pressfield, New York Times bestselling author of The War of Art
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“What I love about this book is that Tim tells the truth. He not only shares his wins as he pursued his dream, but also his devastating failures. Everybody faces challenges when starting something new and this book is the secret sauce in overcoming them.”
– Barbara Corcoran, founder of The Corcoran Group, author, and “Shark Tank” investor
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“I’ve known Tim for a decade, but I had no idea what a skilled storyteller he was. In Running Down a Dream, he shatters the mold of a typical self-help book by offering a fresh perspective—and an array of life-changing advice—on creativity, success, and happiness.”
– Daniel H. Pink, New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of When and Drive
Paperback: 211 pages
Tim Grahl is the author of the fiction work The Threshing and the nonfiction works Running Down a Dream and Your First 1000 Copies. For over a decade he has worked with top authors and creatives including Daniel H. Pink, Barbara Corcoran, Hugh MacLeod, Hugh Howey, Chip and Dan Heath, and many more. He has run the campaigns to launch dozens of bestselling books and built and sold two companies. He works with his friend and editor Shawn Coyne at Story Grid Universe where they help writers tell better stories.
Shawn Coyne is a writer, editor, and publishing professional with over 30 years of experience. He has analyzed, acquired, edited, written, marketed, represented, or published 374 books with many dozens of bestsellers across all genres, and generated over $150,000,000 of revenue.
He graduated in 1986 with a degree in Biology from Harvard College, with a distinction of Magna Cum Laude for his thesis laboratory research work at the Charles A. Dana Laboratory of Toxicology at the Harvard School of Public Health. After Coyne left the laboratory, his findings were acknowledged and served as the inspiration for Mandana Sassanfar and Leona Samson’s Identification and Preliminary Characterization of an 06-Methylguanine DNA Repair Methyltransferase in the Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae publication in the venerable The Journal of Biological Chemistry (Vol. 265, No. 1, Issue of January 5, pp. 20-25, 1990).
In 1991, early in his publishing career, Coyne began an independent investigation into the structure, function and organization of narrative, which he has since coined Simulation Synthesis Theory. His synoptic integration of Aristotle’s Poetics, Freytag’s The Technique of the Drama, Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, McKee’s Story, among many other story structure investigations with contemporary cognitive science, quantum information theory, cybernetics, evolutionary theory, behavioral psychology, Peircean and Jamesian pragmatism, Jungian depth psychology, Theologian and Philosopher Paul Tillich's conception of "ultimate concern," and fighter pilot John Boyd’s OODA loop serves as philosophical, scientific and spiritual foundations for his teaching.
In 2015, he created Story Grid Methodology to begin teaching and further developing Simulation Synthesis Theory. Since then he has given lectures on the origin of story, the integration of storytelling and science, and the necessity of telling complex stories to thousands of students all over the world.
In addition to The Story Grid and Mentoring the Machines, he’s authored, coauthored or ghost-written numerous bestselling nonfiction and fiction titles. His most recent lecture series, “Genre Blueprint” applies his Simulation Synthesis Theory to popular works such as The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien and The Matrix by Lara and Lana Wachowski.