The Writer Files

Kelton Reid has been asking bestselling authors the same set of questions for over a decade, and the answers never get boring. How many words do you write a day? What does your desk look like? When do you give up on a draft? The Writer Files treats writing less like a mystical calling and more like a working craft, with routines and tools and neurological quirks that can be studied and copied. Guests include literary novelists, thriller writers, memoirists, journalists, and the occasional screenwriter or poet, basically anyone whose job involves putting words in a row for a living. The conversations focus heavily on productivity: the specific apps they use, how they handle research, what they do when the words will not come, whether they outline or discover the story as they go. Reid also folds in chunks about the neuroscience of creativity and flow states, which gives the show a different texture from most author interview podcasts. Episodes run 35 to 50 minutes and there are nearly 500 of them in the archive. For working writers who want practical answers about how other working writers actually get their pages done, this is a solid weekly listen.