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.

Have you ever wondered why artistic people seem to be slightly different than the rest? That many of the creative people that we know seem to have unique personalities, and even tend to be somewhat eccentric? And have you ever read someone’s work and thought to yourself - wow, this writer’s brain is 'wired' differently?

For this episode, we will get into the neuroscience of creative writing, by exploring some of the neural mechanisms that form the basis of writing creatively. 

We will discuss the cliché of how creative people’s brains, their thought processes, and their mental workings are unique and different, which is what allows them to express themselves in compelling ways - and dive into the actual scientific evidence to back this stereotype.

We will also go into some of the factors that have a role to play directly - so the neuroscience of it on one hand, and some secondary factors that also play a role in those neural functions, in terms of the brain functions that affect the cognitive patterns in writers.

Finally, we will touch upon the topic of psychoactive substances, and how writers have, over the centuries, used them to enhance their imagination and creativity - like opium in the 18th century, laudanum by Victorian writers, and LSD in the 20th.

In this episode, we will explore how dialogues operate in works of fiction, and what makes conversations between characters sound authentic, so that readers feel wholly invested. While doing so, we will also will delve into the broader picture of how the conversations that we have in our lives impact us as individuals, to be able to leverage those experiences while crafting powerful dialogues and conversations in our writing.

Have you noticed how we feel different in new cities, behave a particular way in certain social settings, and sometimes feel entirely out of place even in familiar surroundings?b

We, as cognitive, perceptive, sentimental, and inquisitive individuals, tend to absorb elements of the spaces we are in or have been in. Even when we don't directly interact with the spaces around us, they have varying effects on our mental and physical state of being, sometimes even controlling our actions. 

This is a rather overlooked thought profound aspect of our realities, but this phenomenon - of spaces affecting us - is a crucial and pervasive aspect of human existence. 

Spaces affect us, altering our natural behaviours, habits, tendencies, personalities even, and even moulding our identities in the long run. Yet, we treat our surroundings mostly as the backgrounds of our lives, discounting the power of our physical environments over our psyche. But the effects take more serious proportions, we get jolted out of our complacency, and see the direct or indirect effects of the space/place on us. 

In fiction, geographical locations, physical spaces, the environments that form the backdrop and the context of our works of fiction, are not static spaces, but active agents in shaping the characters in the narratives. They give the storyline its own unique flavour - sets the mood for different scenes, lends believability, and influences how the readers perceive and feel the narrative.

This episode will delve into the role of impactful settings in fiction, how we as writers can create more evocative worlds to immerse the reader in, and also go into the broader and rather fascinating subject of how spaces and places - our surroundings - impact us as individuals in society. 

Feeling uninspired, stuck in a creative rut, and not knowing what topic to write on, is a common experience.

Choosing the right subject can often be more challenging than the writing itself. We know that it's not just about finding any topic, but one that resonates with us, elevates our writing style, and showcases our talents in the best possible way. The key lies in identifying ideas with potential and having the confidence to develop them.

In this episode, I will explore some reasons why we tend to struggle in this respect, and share some strategies to manage and overcome creative blocks in writing.