You're listening to Away with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett. If you're a writer or want to be one, then you know the pain of trying to

arrange those words in just the right way. And you also know the joy of hitting that sweet spot

when you succeed. But what if in order to pay the bills, you have to spend a lot of time writing in another genre?

Maybe you're a novelist who has to write web copy by day or a poet who has to work as a grant writer.

Take Michael Errard. He's a journalist and essayist, but for his day job, he has to write reports for a think tank.

And he describes the tradeoff this way. He says, I'm a dancer who walks for a living. Oh, nice. Isn't that great? So here's a question, Grant. If you're a writer who has to compromise that way to make ends meet, how do you keep your creative work from being polluted? What a struggle that must be, right?

Well, I had it.

I ran into this back when I was trying to support my etymological habit.

I was writing for a beauty magazine by day.

I was pouring all my energy into stories like how to get the perfect butt.

And then by night, I'd be trying to write gracefully about ancient Greek.

And it wasn't easy.

It was really hard to make that transition between the two because you get a rhythm going.

Did you do something to clear your mind?

Was there something like a walk or even something simple like that?

Well, certainly walks and that kind of thing.

But in terms of language, you know what?

Often I would just copy the kind of writing

that I wanted to emulate. I mean, literally, almost like an art student, painting an old master.

I would read other writers aloud. I would read my betters, plenty of them, and I would read

them aloud. And sometimes I would actually either try to write in their style literally, or I would just take dictation from them.

...