Dry January, the Year of the Red Horse, and the unexpected productivity of writing longhand in busy airports open Season 2 of First Person Present. When routine becomes stale and your home office starts feeling like a creative prison, what happens if you embrace the “scrappy performative energy” of public writing, even if it makes you feel exposed? (Exhibitionism, anybody?)

Josh and Dasha introduce their new format with listener voicemails, starting with Brian B.’s guilty confession about generating a thousand words in an airport versus struggling in his quiet home office. The conversation explores the tension between beloved routines and the creative stagnation they can cause, from writing in bars (not this month) to the strategic use of location changes as a tool for breaking through writer’s block.

Then, diving into the science of habit formation and BJ Fogg’s concept of habit anchoring, we examine why switching up small elements of your writing process (time of day, lighting, music, handwriting versus typing) can reveal something essential about the machine you’re building. Plus: failed vampire novels, romance novels that turn into grief novels, and why Brad Listi’s decade-long novel-in-progress should give us all hope.

Links

The Vampire Novel I’ll Never Write

Habit Stacking for Writers

Beach Read by Emily Henry

Otherppl Podcast

Be Brief and Tell Them Everything by Brad Listi

BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Too Much Birthday – The Cut (not New York Magazine lol)

Theme music: “1982” by See Jazz