Jun 1, 2026 · 54 min · 11 segments
She’s baaaaack! Any chance to chat with my former podcast co-host Allison Tait (who writes as A.L Tait) is a good day, and she’s back with yet another book hitting shelves – tween romance, *The Last…
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Alison TaitGuestValerie KhooHostNat NewmanI was at a cafe waiting for a friend, and I realized that I had been staring at the back of the man at the next table for about 10 minutes, right? Specifically, lucky he didn't notice, right? [laughs] Specifically, I was staring at the collar of his shirt, and it was sitting slightly askew against the back of his neck, as if he'd dressed in a hurry, and there was this tiny gap where you could see s- the faint red mark his watch strap had pressed into his skin.
But when I got home that night, I wrote three paragraphs in my notebook about that collar, about what kind of person leaves the house with a collar like that, about what their morning had been, about the watch.
Two people can, you know, walk down exactly the same street, and they'll come back with completely different raw material.
One person notices the way the late afternoon light hits the second story windows, perhaps.
But another might notice the conversation at the fish and chip shop about a missing dog.
And yet another writer might notice the cracked tile outside the laundromat that nobody had bothered to fix in eight years.
I mean, we're all walking through the same world, right? And somehow each of us is collecting a slightly different one to the other.
So after y- many years of editing other people's writing, w- the thing is, the pattern of what you notice is, is, is what contributes to your voice, your worldview, your point of view.
It's actually something i- that in you that reaches for the cracked tile, right? Every single time.
The man at the next table is reaching for w- the other writer is reaching for the conversation at the fish and chip shop, and he would write a completely different scene in the same cafe.
You know? You don't have to invent your thing, your shtick, right? You already have it.
Your noticing pattern is sitting there already, already fully formed in your head.
At the end of today, or, or right now, if you're, you know, inclined, jot down the first three things that actually caught your attention today.
I was at a cafe waiting for a friend, and I realized that I had been staring at the back of the man at the next table for about 10 minutes, right? Specifically, lucky he didn't notice, right? [laughs] Specifically, I was staring at the collar of his shirt, and it was sitting slightly askew against the back of his neck, as if he'd dressed in a hurry, and there was this tiny gap where you could see s- the faint red mark his watch strap had pressed into his skin.
But when I got home that night, I wrote three paragraphs in my notebook about that collar, about what kind of person leaves the house with a collar like that, about what their morning had been, about the watch.
Two people can, you know, walk down exactly the same street, and they'll come back with completely different raw material.
One person notices the way the late afternoon light hits the second story windows, perhaps.
But another might notice the conversation at the fish and chip shop about a missing dog.
And yet another writer might notice the cracked tile outside the laundromat that nobody had bothered to fix in eight years.
I mean, we're all walking through the same world, right? And somehow each of us is collecting a slightly different one to the other.
So after y- many years of editing other people's writing, w- the thing is, the pattern of what you notice is, is, is what contributes to your voice, your worldview, your point of view.
It's actually something i- that in you that reaches for the cracked tile, right? Every single time.
The man at the next table is reaching for w- the other writer is reaching for the conversation at the fish and chip shop, and he would write a completely different scene in the same cafe.
You know? You don't have to invent your thing, your shtick, right? You already have it.
Your noticing pattern is sitting there already, already fully formed in your head.
At the end of today, or, or right now, if you're, you know, inclined, jot down the first three things that actually caught your attention today.
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