Anne Lamott & Neil Allen: Write Toward the Really Real

Sounds True: Insights at the Edge

Tami Simon

Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2026

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if the secret to better writing isn’t more technique—but more truth? Tami Simon speaks with beloved author Anne Lamott and her husband Neal Allen—writer, spiritual coach, and author of Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences—about the craft of finding your voice, writing toward compassion and truth, and why the most powerful sentences come not from the polished mind but from the really real.

This conversation offers genuine transmission—not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together. Originally aired on Sounds True One.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Sounds True Podcast Network.
0:07.3	Don't write towards irony.
0:09.8	Don't write towards like snark or loftiness.
0:13.2	Right towards compassion.
0:15.4	You know, right towards real.
0:17.9	Right towards the real.
0:19.6	It's like anything that you master in life.
0:22.2	The point of mastery isn't virtuosity.
0:25.5	The point of mastery is there comes a time when you don't have to try as hard anymore.
0:33.0	Welcome, friends.
0:34.4	In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guests are Annie Lamont and her personal husband, Neil Allen.
0:42.3	We're talking about their new book, Good Writing, 36 ways to improve your sentences.
0:50.1	Neil Allen is a writer, a spiritual coach and speaker.
1:05.1	He's a former journalist and corporate executive, self-described hack writer, someone who can write on cue, on deadline.
1:09.8	He's the author of Shapes of Truth and Better Days.
1:13.2	Annie Lamont, maybe you've heard of her.
1:15.3	Maybe you've read one of her books.
1:22.5	She's the author of 20 books, including seven novels, nonfiction work,
1:31.4	and beloved best-selling collections of autobiographical essays, including Traveling Mercies, Plan B,
1:33.4	and Grace eventually.
1:36.5	Friends, stay with us.
1:52.6	I think of both of you as members of my soul family, from my heart to yours and now, including all of our listeners.
	...

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