Barry Yourgrau, author of Mess: One Man’s Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act talks to Nicole Nelson about “writing short”in the distractible age of the Internet, grinding your mind until you get to the place where things flow, and how even as a confessional writer of fiction, when that mask is removed and he is telling his own story, he found writing a memoir scary.

Then Sasha Abramsky, author of The House of Twenty Thousand Books talks about how telling this personal story was different from his other journalistic projects, how he came upon the structure for the book, and  the importance of letting your guard down, having confidence to take chances with the language and ultimately working to put your personal stamp on your writing.

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(Broadcast date: October 14 2015)