You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one.

I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds.

I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of podcasts on all sorts of subjects,

relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life.

So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature,

and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its audience, and maybe that's you.

So if you like this podcast, check out some others on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.

Hello, today we look at intimacy exposed and intimacy denied.

An unconventional diary raises questions about who we are and how much we change over the years.

And I talk to two authors whose novels explore the

indignities and alienating challenges of the housing crisis. First today, Sheila Hetty, whose previous

books, including How Should a Person Be and Motherhood, have mined her own life for material.

With her new book, Alphabetical Diaries, she goes a step beyond auto-fiction by publishing

10 years' worth of her most personal, intimate and most everyday thoughts.

This being Sheila Hetty, though, things aren't as straightforward as they sound.

She took every sentence from a decade of diaries, put the sentences into alphabetical order,

and then edited them down into a

concentrated account, 26 chapters running from A to Z, of love affairs, literary projects,

dislikes, and desires. A book about how difficult it is to change, why we don't want to,

and what is going on in our brain. A book can be about more than one thing, like a kaleidoscope.

It can have many things that coalesce into one thing, different strands of a story,

...