A lot of times when I don't know what's right, I just start describing something.

You know, I just like describe a bird or the sky or the moon or a day or a shoe or whatever. I just start describing it. And then I start to see, okay, well, what's this really about? After it's together, then my job is to figure out what it all means. So it's like I create from a creative mode. Then I stop creative mode. I put on like the critic hat, and then I go back in it with new eyes and start to shape it into something that sort of ties together.

Welcome to how to. I'm Courtney Martin. All right guys, today we have something a little different for you.

I'm very excited about this.

My co-host, Carvel Wallace, has a beautiful memoir coming out.

It's called Another Word for Love.

There's so much in this book that I want to talk to him about,

more than we could possibly cover in one sit-down conversation.

But I think you're going to get a lot out of

hearing Carvel talk about his journey as a writer and podcaster and how he got so damn

emotionally insightful. I hope you enjoy this little peek behind the curtain. I wanted to hear more

about your writing journey because I know you've done a bunch of different things career-wise. When did you first start writing publicly? I didn't get paid to write until I was like 40. I tried to write a book when I was a kid and I wrote like a chapter that I still have. So when I look back on that, I'm like, oh, I actually wanted to be a writer for a long time.

But then I did other art stuff.

Like, I played music for a long time. Then I went to school for theater. And then I was an actor for a while. And then I got more serious about music. And I did that for a while. I was like the songwriter for a band. And I wrote a bunch of songs. I think I wrote like 80 songs or something,

and we recorded some of them, and, you know,

but none of those recordings exist anymore

because that was just like a past.

But in some sense, songs. I think I wrote like 80 songs or something and we recorded some of them and, you know,

but none of those recordings exist anymore because that was just like a past. But in some sense,

that was like a practice in writing, but like my day jobs were always in nonprofit or youth

development or some kind of like lockup facility or something like that. And then I worked at a

tech company briefly and I tried to write a memoir after

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