John and I have been threatening to collaborate on something since the first night we met. That was in October 2016 at the James River Writers Conference in Richmond, Virginia. We were introduced by our mutual friend Ginger Moran (author of American Queen and The Body of Summer) and, after a group dinner, spent hours in the hotel lounge drinking wine and talking about life. We had a ton of common ground—ground we’re still discovering over five years later, like the fact that we both began writing fiction in earnest while living in Northern California at the exact same time. 

We’ve hung out in person four times—at the conference, and on three occasions that John visited New York. We would have hung out in DC last month were it not for an ill-timed extreme COVID scare (mine). But, just like that first night when it felt like we’d known each other for a really long time, our conversations these days, via Zoom, from a couple hundred miles apart, do not feel like we’re talking to someone we’ve hung out with four times.

In late 2016 we started to collaborate on an epistolary novel—a novel comprised of letters or, if you want to be true to the intended meaning of “comprise,” a novel that comprises letters … but I digress. Late 2016 was the start of a very challenging time for many of us, and like so many creative projects, this one didn’t take off. I dusted it off last night and it has some merit, so maybe we’ll give it a whirl anew. Maybe we won’t.

Cut to last fall. After almost two years of pandemic during which, for some of the same and some individual reasons, we both felt our creativity faltering, we spoke again about collaborating. John pitched me this idea he’d had for a while, a podcast about writing and the creative process, and it was exactly what I needed, too. The idea coalesced at lightning speed … first the concept, then the dream list of guests, and finally the name … the hardest part of this entire process was settling on a name.

We scoured the internet—and our memories—in search of title-worthy morsels of writing wisdom from our favorite authors. We batted around the independent bookstores we love, we tried to come up with our own bon mots. Then I remembered a poem I love by the great Dorothy Parker, Bohemia. In it, Parker uses her trademark wit to criticize artistic types—authors, sculptors, singers, and more. She collectively refers to such vermin as “people who do things” … and bam, a name is born.

We hope you’ll enjoy listening to our podcast as much as we’re enjoying making it! We welcome your feedback—and if you do like what you hear, please give us a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform.