How I Write
Before book sales and PR buzz, your favorite writers began with two things: the blank page and an idea. Each week on How I Write, we go behind-the-scenes with today’s top writers to uncover the meta-mechanics of writing and the lifestyle behind it. You’ll be the first to hear writers deconstruct their creative process: from banging their head on the keyboard to marking the last period of their final draft. Victory. Come discover how great writing is made. And who knows? Maybe you’ll be next. New episodes of the How I Write show go live every week on Apple, Spotify and YouTube.com/DavidPerellChannel.
Episodes
December 26, 2025 • 80 mins
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Elif Shafak has a way of writing that's lush and enchanted. She writes about real things in the world: water, houseboats, ordinary things that we stopped seeing. And she infuses them with life and wonder so that we can see the world fresh again.
Elif has written more than 21 books, and she's the president of the Royal Society of Literature, which has had fellows like J. R. R....
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December 17, 2025 • 81 mins
Henry Shukman is a poet, author, mindfulness teacher and Zen master. He has studied meditation for 35 years, principally in the Sanbo Zen lineage. His most recent books are Original Love (HarperOne) and the Zen memoir, One Blade of Grass.
He is also the co-founder of the acclaimed single-path meditation app, The Way. He has taught at Google, the New York Times, Harvard Business School, and the Institute of American Indian Arts. He...
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December 10, 2025 • 61 mins
Every so often, I'll re-publish some of my favorite How I Write interviews. This classic episode is with Ward Farnsworth, a law professor and former dean at the University of Texas School of Law who has written popular books about clear thinking, language, and philosophy. His books include Classical English Style and works on rhetoric and legal writing.
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December 3, 2025 • 51 mins
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This episode brings together the moments from How I Write in 2025 that have stayed with me the longest. These are the clips I revisit when I need to be reminded why writing matters.
Robert Macfarlane talks about wonder as something you have to actively protect. Jayne Anne Phillips explains why the memories we keep from childhood reveal who we are. Paul Harding makes the case fo...
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November 26, 2025 • 64 mins
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Jonathan Franzen is one of the most influential novelists alive today. He sees fiction as the most fundamental human art, and in this conversation he explains how he actually makes it: the discipline, the daily grind, and the psychological spelunking required to write characters who feel startlingly alive.
Franzen has always had an outsider’s eye. He questioned the hype of the ...
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November 19, 2025 • 64 mins
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Atul Gawande has written four books and countless articles for The New Yorker. When you think about doctors who write well, he's going to be the first person who comes to mind.
What's unique about him is that this isn't something that came naturally. The work of research, writing, editing, shaping sentences, telling stories: those are all things that he taught himself.
He's a sur...
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November 12, 2025 • 68 mins
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Brandon Stanton, the creator of Humans of New York, came on the show to talk about how he wrote his way to five published books and 13 million Instagram followers. Along the way, the man basically invented his own genre of biography. There are short stories, there are long stories.
What he would do every single day is he'd walk out onto the streets of New York, photograph peopl...
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November 5, 2025 • 84 mins
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David Grann: one of the best storytellers alive today and an absolute master at narrative nonfiction. You might know him from "Killers of the Flower Moon", which Martin Scorsese turned into a film. And then there's "The Wager"; I can't think of a single book that more people I know have said that they just read the entire thing, from start to finish, in one sitting.
So what is...
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October 29, 2025 • 69 mins
Susan Orlean writes nonfiction books that read like fiction, sort of working in the style of Joan Didion or Tom Wolfe. But what makes her different is how intentional she is about her writing process.
She's very intentional about the research, the writing, the editing phases, all of it. And if you're thinking about your own process, how can you structure your life in order to lead to good writing? Well, you're going to love this e...
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October 22, 2025 • 68 mins
Stefan Sagmeister is the author of six books and one of the most influential designers in the world. He's won multiple Grammy Awards for his designs, and he's designed album covers for people like Jay-Z and David Byrne, the Rolling Stones.
But he's a writer. What does he write about? Well, design, beauty, how to find good ideas.
You'll notice when you pick up one of his books that the form, the style, the vibe, the typography is ...
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October 15, 2025 • 68 mins
Morgan Housel is one of the top non-fiction writers in the world. He is most famous for his book “The Psychology of Money”, which has now sold more than 8 million copies.
Before he wrote the book, he wrote more than 4,000 blog posts for publications like The Wall Street Journal and The Motley Fool, and that’s how he honed his craft. This is my second time having Morgan on the show. The first time, I just wanted to talk about Morga...
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October 8, 2025 • 97 mins
You can’t walk through an airport without seeing a Mitch Albom book on one of the shelves. He’s most famous for writing Tuesdays with Morrie, which may very well be the best-selling memoir of all time. He’s now written 14 books, which combined have sold more than 40 million copies.
In 45 years of hitting the keyboard, this is the deepest conversation he’s ever had about the craft of writing. I asked him to approach this like a col...
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September 24, 2025 • 119 mins
I interviewed Dan Wang, a writer and analyst whose annual letters from China have become a first draft of modern Chinese history. We talked about how he blends personal observation with deep analysis, how to skip the cliches and write with texture instead, and how classical music and literature have shaped his writing style.
What’s unique about Dan is that he built a name for himself by writing one essay per year (in an age where ...
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September 17, 2025 • 47 mins
I interviewed Ada Limón and Joy Harjo, two of America’s most celebrated poets and former U.S. Poet Laureates. We talked about the art of deep listening, how to translate the music of the world into language, and why silence is never empty but always alive. We explored how poetry resists “clock time,” why metaphor is essential to truth, how culture lives through song and dance, and what it means to trust your voice across a lifetime...
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September 10, 2025 • 91 mins
I interviewed Jack and Ryan from AJR, the band that has built one of the most original voices in modern music. We talked about how they use humor and vulnerability to write songs that connect on a deeper level, why embarrassment is often the best creative compass, how Broadway and magic inspire their live shows, and what they’ve learned about navigating TikTok, streaming, and the new economics of the music industry. We also explore...
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September 3, 2025 • 86 mins
Every so often, I’ll re-publish one of my favorite How I Write episodes. This classic episode is with Steven Pressfield, the author of more than 25 books who speaks as beautifully about the creative process as he writes. He waded through 27 years of Resistance so you don’t have to. Come learn his best practices for doing your best work.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:40 Your career in writing
00:07:00 Writing rough drafts
00:1...
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August 27, 2025 • 90 mins
I interviewed Jimmy Soni, who is currently writing a book about Kobe Bryant. He spent six years on his previous book about the origin story of PayPal and has mastered the art of investigative biography. We talked about his 4am writing routine, how he blends research and writing to battle writers block, why he finds the best stories by talking to people on the periphery, his thoughts on using AI as a writing tool, and his experience...
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August 20, 2025 • 60 mins
I interviewed John Lennox, the Oxford mathematician who's spent decades bridging science and faith. We talked about why John 1:1 reveals we live in a word-based universe, how to recognize God-breathed scripture, why scientific explanations don't exclude God, and his fascinating take on AI as humanity's attempt to "make God." He also shared practical writing advice about self-criticism and why young people struggle with metaphors. I...
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August 13, 2025 • 91 mins
I interviewed Henrik Karlsson, a writer who's developed a five-step method for writing that starts with exploring without pressure and ends with crafting the opening last, after everything else is done. We talked about why looking away from the page improves your writing, how to suck reality into your descriptions, why protecting young ideas from early critique matters, and how to access pre-linguistic mental states where the best ...
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August 6, 2025 • 51 mins
I interviewed Jayne Anne Phillips, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel Night Watch. We dug into passages from her writing that will show you how she thinks about voice, character, and the poetry of great writing. As you listen, I want you to notice something: pay attention to how many times Jane describes writing as a full-bodied experience. She sees the creative process almost like an archaeologist would, feeling ...
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