A listener named Lita who grew up in Cuba shares her favorite Spanish idiom for “working hard”: sudando tinta, or literally, “sweating ink.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Sweating Ink” We had a voicemail from Lita...
A 1905 letter from Virginia Woolf offers comfort to anyone who lacks confidence in their own work. As a young, would-be writer, Woolf herself expressed doubt about her own abilities. It would be another 23 years before she published her...
A profile in The New Yorker of writer Patricia Lockwood, author of Will There Ever Be Another You (Bookshop|Amazon) opens by saying she has “the impish verve and provocative guilelessness of a peeing cupid,” a description the quirky author herself...
Books were rare treasures in the Middle Ages, painstakingly copied out by hand. So how to protect them from theft? Scribes sometimes added a curse to the first page of those books that was supposed to keep thieves away — and some were as vicious as...
Wise advice from author Zadie Smith: Put your manuscript in a drawer until you become its reader rather than its writer. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Become Your Work’s Reader” Here’s some excellent...
The old-time radio performer Fred Allen had some great one-liners, such as Hanging is too good for a man who likes puns; he should be drawn and quoted. He also said I like long walks, especially when taken by someone who annoys me. Among his most...