Anthony Doerr

You know, like I don't have that notebook about whatever it was I wrote down about, about Mayor Dingledine, but I'll never forget going into his house and how funny it smelled any more than I'll forget, you know, my visits with Doc Watson or Merle Haggard or other people that, you know, just made me feel like there was something about my generation that needed to adhere to their generation in order to bring a through line into the future.

I-- Speaking of, uh, I interviewed the writer Anthony Dorewhat-- Anthony Doerr, and I asked him about writer's block, and he said, "I don't believe in writer's block." He said, "Writer's block is a failure of courage," and that's always stuck with me.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was

like a real Cormac McCarthy, Anthony Doerr type.

That's right.

You're going to sell a million of these.

By way of background, I am a former English literature professor.

I have a PhD in English language and literature, so I'm a writer myself, and I've always been interested in treating songwriters the same way that we, we treat prose writers, as writers, plain and simple.

We are laser-focused strictly on the nuts and bolts of the songwriting process.

I don't care about how bands get their name, tour stories, favorite foods, or anything like that.

You can find that anywhere else.

This is a deep dive into the songwriting process.

I'd really like to think of this more as an intelligent conversation between two writers, rather than a straight up interview format.

So with that, check out this episode.

Yeah.

The piece uses Anthony Doerr's Pulitzer-winning novel, um, All the Light We Cannot See, to illustrate this.

Such an amazing book.

It is.