Spencer Bailey

It was almost like, for him, nothing mattered except for the words you're putting on the page, that that's what it means to be alive.

And I love that

sort of energy and that attitude, even if it's, you know, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Like, I think you could drive yourself pretty crazy approaching life that way or your work that way.

But I think just to wake up in the morning and be like,

The words I'm going to put on the page are important.

They do matter.

They can change somebody's life.

They can move somebody.

They can awe somebody.

They can wow somebody.

And I think that was his point, that the energy you can compact into a single sentence has the power to shift the world.

How did that training shape the way you later edited magazines and interviewed people?

it's everything.

I mean, I feel like that Lish course is so central to the work I do today as an editor and a writer and a podcast host interviewer.

I'm constantly in real time thinking that way.

I'm trying to do my best actually right now with the answers to just totally let go because I feel like when you're on the other side of the mic, it's really important to just be you and yourself and,

And I think it's important as an interviewer to be yourself, but you have to prepare.

It's like almost like learn as much as you possibly can, build up all that energy, try to let some of it go, get into the flow of the conversation, but also embed that conversation in.

with the kind of rigor that comes with good sentence making.