Advertise on podcast: Written Works For You, By You

Tonight's letter was never sent. It was found in a drawer after Beethoven's death, folded, addressed only to "My Angel, My All" — a woman history has never fully identified. Two centuries later, we still don't know who he was writing to. We just know what he needed to say. Pull up a chair. This one's raw in a way you might not expect from him. Got a letter of your own — sent, unsent, or somewhere in between? I read every submission myself: [email protected]. I'm still listening. Music by: Kevin McLeod Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Substack: https://substack.com/@wwfyby Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen.

We're opening a new season with something a little different this year: Letters. Real words, written for one person, meant for no one else — until now. Tonight's letter is one of the oldest in the collection: a Civil War major, one week before battle, writing to his wife with the kind of honesty most of us only manage once in a lifetime. He had a feeling he wouldn't come home. He was right. Pull up a chair. This one's short, but it earns every second. Got a letter of your own — sent, unsent, or somewhere in between? I read every submission myself: [email protected]. Music provided: Kevin McLeod "Heavy Heart" Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen.

A bonus, between-seasons stop by the fire. Sylvia has finally gotten what she wanted — her husband, out of the city, settled at his old country house at Yessney. She calls it peace. The hill behind the house might call it something else. Saki was a master of the short and the sharp, and this one is both — quiet, strange, and a little older than it looks. Something in these woods was worshipped once, and it hasn't forgotten. Curl up. Keep the lights low. I'm still listening. Submissions always open: ⁠[email protected]⁠ Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen.

Season 2 ends here. Oliver Onions wrote this in 1911. A writer moves into a house to finish his novel. Slowly, politely, reasonably, he loses his mind. There is no ghost at midnight. There is only a presence, a beckoning, a gradual substitution of one voice for another. He believes he is falling in love. He is not. He believes he is still himself. He is not. This is a story about solitude and what it breeds. About the voice that replaces your own when you have been alone too long. Literary, meta, deeply unsettling. I read this one with the fire low and the door slightly open. Some stories need air. Some stories are the air, and they are not breathing with you. Written Works for You, By You — where your words get their first yes, out loud, where someone can hear them. Submissions always open: [email protected] Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen. The room is open. I'm still listening.

Season 2 nears its end. We've sat together through coming-of-age and comedy, through philosophy and folk horror, through feminist dread and minimalist survival, through satire and absurdity and fever and laughter. The room has held all of it. Tonight the room grows colder. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote "The Body Snatcher" in 1884, based on real events — the Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh, where men killed to sell corpses to medical schools. Stevenson strips the Gothic of its romance. No haunted castles. Just anatomy rooms, graveyards, and the slow realization that the corpse on the table was someone you knew.It is a story about the body — what we owe it, what we fear from it, what we will do when no one is watching the men who need it. I read this one with the lamp turned low, but not for atmosphere. For respect. Written Works for You, By You — where your words get their first yes, out loud, where someone can hear them. Submissions always open: [email protected] Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen. The room is open. I'm still listening.

A man named Simon Wheeler tells a story that cannot possibly be true — but he tells it with such absolute sincerity that you find yourself leaning in anyway. It involves a gambler named Jim Smiley, a frog named Dan'l Webster, and a stranger who knows exactly how to cheat a cheater. Mark Twain wrote this in 1865, and it is pure American absurdity — a tall tale told in bars, on porches, in rooms where the fire is high and nobody checks the facts. No secret meaning, no hidden pattern, no demon in the corner. Just a man, a frog, and the absolute certainty that human gullibility is infinite. I read this one with a smile. After the last few stories, the room needed to laugh. Written Works for You, By You — where your words get their first yes, out loud, where someone can hear them. Submissions always open: [email protected]'m still listening. Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen. The room is open. I'm still listening.

A scholar of quiet habits develops a taste for green tea — too much of it, drank too late, alone in his study with his books. And then he begins to see something. A small figure. A monkey, with eyes that know him. It sits on his furniture. It turns the pages of his manuscripts. It watches him pray. No one else sees it. Sheridan Le Fanu wrote this in 1869, and he stripped the Gothic of its castles and moors. This horror is intimate, domestic, feverish. A study in London. A man coming apart in polite, reasonable increments. The tea is still warm. But the cup is not empty. I read this with the lamp turned low. Some stories require darkness to breathe. Written Works for You, By You — where your words get their first yes, out loud, where someone can hear them. Submissions always open: [email protected]'m still listening. Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen. The room is open. I'm still listening.

A critic discovers his favorite author has hidden a secret in his work — a unified meaning, a pattern, a figure in the carpet. He spends his life searching for it. He never finds it. Or perhaps he does, and cannot say. Henry James wrote this in 1896, and he stripped it of everything except obsession dressed in its Sunday best. Long sentences coil like DNA. Politeness becomes suffocation. The silence at the end is the point. I sat with this one for a long time. It is impenetrable, frustrating, and strangely beautiful. The room held it anyway. Written Works for You, By You — where your words get their first yes, out loud, where someone can hear them. Submissions always open: [email protected]'m still listening. Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen. The room is open. I'm still listening.

A man travels through the Yukon at seventy-five below zero. He is practical. He is experienced. He is not wise enough. Jack London wrote this in 1908 after his own time in the Klondike, and he stripped it of everything except cold, distance, and the small decisions that separate the living from the frozen. There is no villain here. Only temperature, and the certainty that the landscape does not forgive. Recorded in the room, but tonight the room is very far away. Some stories take you somewhere the fire cannot follow. Written Works for You, By You — where your words get their first yes, out loud, where someone can hear them. Submissions always open: [email protected] I'm still listening. Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen. The room is open. I'm still listening.

A man wakes up. His nose is gone. That is not the strange part. Nikolai Gogol wrote "The Nose" in 1836 and I am fairly certain he was laughing the entire time. A St. Petersburg official chases his own nose through the city — now dressed as a higher-ranking civil servant, refusing to recognize its former face. Bureaucracy happens. Nothing resolves neatly. Gogol publishes it and goes to breakfast. Absurdist, satirical, slightly horrifying, and genuinely funny. I still don't know if it's a nightmare or a joke. Maybe it's both. Written Works for You, By You — where your words get their first yes, out loud, where someone can hear them. Submissions always open: [email protected] Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen. The room is open. I'm still listening.

A woman. A room. A pattern on the wall that starts to look back. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" in 1892 after her own experience with the "rest cure" — a prescription for women that mostly meant stay still, stay quiet, don't think too hard. She gave the world a warning. Some people heard it. Some people still don't. This is a story about what happens when rest becomes prison, when wallpaper becomes obsession, and when the only voice left is the one no one believes. Recorded in the room with the fire low. Some stories need that. Written Works for You, By You — where your words get their first yes, out loud, where someone can hear them. Submissions always open: [email protected] a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen. The room is open. I'm still listening.

The room is back. I was away for a minute — moving, no WiFi, life in boxes. But the light stayed on, and now the microphone is warm again. Literally. I finally got a real mic. A Snowball Blue. No more skull headphones. So if I sound different tonight, that is why. Today: "The Overcoat" by Nikolai Gogol. Written in 1842, in St. Petersburg, Russia. A clerk named Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin has one threadbare overcoat. When it falls apart, he saves every kopeck to have a new one made. The names are absurd. The bureaucracy is absurd. But underneath the satire, there is something real: a man who wants dignity, who wants to be seen, who freezes in the Russian winter and dreams of warmth. Gogol wrote comedy, but he never forgot the person underneath. I read whatever you send me — fragments, poems, screenplays, journal entries, 3am thoughts, any genre. Real or imagined, anonymous or named. No judgement, no critique, just your words out loud. Your first yes. [email protected] Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen. The room is open. I'm still listening.

No story this week. I'm moving, the WiFi is gone, and the room is in boxes. Instead: a personal note about why I started Written Works For You, By You, what I thought it would be, and what it became. The silence, the submissions that didn't come, the dead voices that became the point. The dog who got me through it. The notebook I found while packing. The room moves with me. It always has. It always will. Back next week with "The Overcoat" by Gogol. Send me your words: [email protected] I'm still listening.

A journal found in a house in Baltimore. Dated September to October, 1922. A man named Tom receives a letter from his lost friend Arthur, gone ten years, and goes to find him. He doesn't know what he's walking into. Neither do you. M. Humphreys wrote this — but that name hid a woman. Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes, writing under a man's name because the world didn't think a woman could write this kind of horror. She wrote about Jack the Ripper, about murder, about the darkness in ordinary houses. And she had to do it in disguise. The horror here is not blood or monsters. It's time stopped. A friendship frozen in decay. The inability to leave, the inability to save someone already lost. The smile that isn't a smile. The blue complexion. The fact that Tom stays for a month, knowing something is wrong, unable to act. I read whatever you send me — fragments, poems, screenplays, 3am thoughts, any genre. No judgement, no critique. Just your words, out loud. Your first yes. [email protected] Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen. The room is open. I'm still listening.

You know the need. A place to sit when the night is long and the heart is hollow. Somewhere with light, with someone who doesn't rush you. Somewhere to be alone without being lonely. Hemingway wrote this in 1933. An old man in a Spanish café, drinking alone. Two waiters watching him. One young, impatient, wants to go home. The other older, and he understands — the need for a clean, well-lighted place against the dark. I read whatever you send me. Fragments, poems, 3am thoughts, any genre. No judgement, no critique. Just your words, out loud. Your first yes. [email protected] Leave a five-star review for a shout out: Reddit: ⁠⁠wwfyby⁠⁠. Instagram: ⁠⁠@writtenworksforyoubyyou⁠⁠. Website: ⁠⁠writtenworksforyoubyyou.carrd.co⁠⁠ Available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and wherever you listen. The room is open. I'm still listening.