Talk About Writing

In this episode of Talk About Writing, we explore what it means to write when you’re feeling low, unmotivated, or simply uninspired.

Whether it’s due to lethargy, PMS, hormonal fluctuations, or just a dip in mental energy, many writers find that their productivity and the quality of their work suffer during such times. We discuss practical approaches to keep going when you’re not at your creative peak, as well as the importance of accepting that creativity naturally ebbs and flows. Touching briefly on writers like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton—who navigated their own struggles with depression—we reflect on how mental health can influence the writing process, without defining it.

Ultimately, this episode is about the things you need to know when you're just not feeling inspired.

What makes a darkened street or a haunted house feel real in your story?

In this episode of Talk About Writing, we dig into the craft of building settings that are not just seen, but sensed, and how spaces carry mood and meaning. Drawing on writers like Dickens and Agatha Christie, as well as ideas from philosophers like Gernot Böhme and Henri Lefebvre, we’ll explore how settings shape emotions, reflect power dynamics, impact behaviours, shape relations, and even become characters themselves.

If you’ve ever wanted your reader to feel a place rather than just see it, this episode is for you. Follow these steps to understand how you should create the settings of your story in impactful and memorable way.

There is something peaceful and stimulating about writing in cafés.

In this episode, we talk about the timeless ritual of creating in coffeehouses. From the Ottoman Empire to Sigmund Freud’s Vienna, cafés represent the timeless ritual that blends solitude with crowds, which can be the perfect ground for writing.

Let's dive into how working in cafes help us write better (or at least, make us 'feel' like writers).

This bite-sized episode is all about coffee-fueled productivity, ambient noise psychology, and the curious joy of being alone among strangers.

Today, we're diving into one of the most exciting—and perhaps most challenging—parts of writing fiction: building unforgettable and impactful characters.

This is not just about the fundamentals. It is important to think about how characters can carry a narrative—how they can shape a story just as much as the plot itself. The best characters don’t just support the story—they are the story.

In this episode, I’ll walk you through a framework—something I call the EIEPF model—that breaks down five essential dimensions of character-building: their Exterior, Internal world, External world, Past, and Future. Alongside that, we’ll talk about the “X and Y axes” of narrative: the relationships, contexts, and tensions that pull your character in different directions and reveal who they really are.

By the end of this episode, I want you to not only understand what goes into creating a fully realized character—but to feel equipped to start crafting your own.

So, whether you’re working on a novel, a screenplay, or just toying with a story idea, stay with me, because this episode is about giving your characters the depth, nuance, and humanity they deserve.

Translation is more than transforming just words—it’s about preserving the rhythm, emotion, and the soul of a text to allow the reader to taste the essence of the original.

In this episode of Talk About Writing, I sit down with renowned translator and professor of practice, Arunava Sinha, to explore the art of translation—what it means to carry a text across languages, cultures, and time.

With nearly 100 translations to his name, Arunava has played a major role in bringing classic, modern, and contemporary Bengali and Hindi literature to global audiences.

Whether you're a reader, an aspiring translator, or simply curious about what gets lost and found in translation, this episode is for you.

Hope you enjoy this bonus episode!

Talk About Writing – Season 2, Episode 1

The Self-Starter Guide to Writing, Part I: How to Come Up with THE Idea, Staying Curious, and How Too Much Thinking Spoils the Story

Welcome back, writers! After a much-needed break (and many scoops of gelato in Florence), I’m thrilled to launch Season 2 of Talk About Writing! This season is all about the technical side of writing—guiding you through the process of finishing a manuscript.

In this first installment of the Self-Starter Series, we tackle one of the biggest hurdles for new and aspiring authors: how to generate the idea for your novel and stop overthinking before you even begin. We'll explore the power of curiosity, why too much planning can stall creativity, and how the key to writing isn’t in endless thinking—it’s in actually writing.

Join me as we dive into the first steps of turning your writing dreams into reality. Let’s kick off 2025 with the resolve to finally put pen to paper!

Writers use strange and creative methods to stay productive. After all, writing requires persistence, and embracing peculiarities can sometimes unlock creative flow.

This episode explores the unique habits of Virginia Woolf, Maya Angelou, Agatha Christie, and others.

It also touches on quirky habits like Friedrich Schiller inhaling the scent of rotten apples to stimulate his creativity and Dan Brown hanging upside down to overcome writer’s block.

An unlikely writer wrote naked, because that is how he got any work done! The name will come as a surprise to you.

In this episode, we will delve into the connection between memory, reminiscence, and writing, drawing on the notion of the "Proust Effect." This concept, named after French novelist Marcel Proust, and describes how sensory experiences can lead to vivid recollections, especially those that are involuntarily.

This sudden surfacing of memories, often at unexpected times, indicates the power of reminiscence in shaping our narratives on one hand, and our understanding of ourselves, on the other.

The episode also discusses how our memories form a bridge between our past and present selves, influencing our sense of identity, our perception of the past, and our writing pursuits. The act of writing from memory can be a deeply reflective and transformative experience in this way.

The unique flavor of our lives, our own personal experiences lend a uniqueness to our writing, because revisiting memories can be a source of creative inspiration and emotional release.

So in this episode we will talk a little bit about the act of reminiscence from the psychological perspective, in terms of why and how the act of looking back at the past, and recalling past events, and really just sitting with our memories (whether deliberately or unwillingly), takes place. And how all of these revisitations of memories have a role to play in our writing pursuits - in what we choose to write, and how we write in general.

In this episode we will explore why we go off on tangents that make our writing seem incoherent, ruining the flow and meaning, how it is connected to us having existential thoughts and, ultimately, to why we look at the stars in the night sky.

The big question here is: why do we gaze at the trillions of shimmering celestial bodies that are thousands of light years away and seem unrelated to our mortal lives?

Is it because we are drawn to the mysteries of the universe, to what lies beyond our reach in that vast nothingness?

Stargazing is essentially an act of engaging with the cosmos and its mysteries, contemplating worlds beyond our reach and reasoning.

Isn't writing about the same thing? When we write, we are contemplating the mysteries of the universe and the labyrinthine maze of our thoughts.

Both stargazing and rambling in writing stem from our innate and very human tendency to look for hidden meanings. Whether sentimental or rational, we humans are inherently curious, driven to explore and understand the world around us and to delve into the intricacies of our minds.

It's beautiful how we gain perspective when we gaze into the sky and write without overthinking, allowing ourselves to get a bit lost. Paradoxically, losing ourselves is also essential to finding ourselves. When we reflect and draw connections between seemingly unrelated topics and let our thoughts flow freely, we often gain self-awareness and deep insights unexpectedly. We don't digress or stargaze to waste time; it happens naturally as we are drawn outward and inward simultaneously.

Going further, at psychological and philosophical levels, both acts force us to ponder infinite possibilities and dive into the immenseness of our minds and the universe around us, raising fundamental existential questions: Why are we here? Who are we?

Both acts can lead to transcendental experiences that can offer us a temporary release from our immediate, earthly problems, lifting us into realms beyond our human experience. They can even become the seeds of spiritual reflection.