Riding a camel in Cairo. Some interviews are this exciting.
This week, I drove to St. Paul to conduct an interview.
I’m writing a piece about anger, and John, the man I interviewed, has been teaching anger management classes at the Twin Cities Men’s Center for 19 years.
John and I talked for nearly two hours. He revealed that he once had his own anger issues and they put his marriage in jeopardy. When John’s wife asked him to attend anger management class, John was in his mid-forties. Not only did the classes turn his life around (evidence, he said, that “you really can teach an old dog new tricks”), but they also inspired him to help other men with their anger issues. He considers his work an “evocation” and hopes to teach anger management classes “until the day I die.”
Yesterday, John called to tell me that two men in his class have agreed to be interviewed, too.
It was a milestone in my writing life. This year, I’ve conducted 23 interviews for work and three interviews for a freelance writing project. But this is the first time I’ve conducted an interview “just because.”
In 2012, I attended a panel on immersive journalism. The facilitator told us not to let a lack of publication/professional credentials deter us from asking for interviews. He noted that nearly 100 percent of the people he’s reached out to over the years have agreed to an interview. The only justification he’s given them? “I’m a writer.”
He explained that most people want to share their stories; being heard is a universal desire.
For two years, the man’s words have percolated in my head. I’ve met a lot of people I’ve wanted to write about, but I’ve been intimidated to approach and ask permission.
But the universe delivered this week, and it’s given me the confidence to approach other people with interview requests. I work with a janitor from Africa and a project manager from Bosnia-Herzegovina who I’d love to write about. I also have two friends — a man who fled Afghanistan during the Soviet War and a woman with a developmentally delayed toddler — with incredible stories.
But beyond these four individuals, the stories are everywhere and while riding the city bus last week, it occurred to me that I could easily extract a book from the 30 people around me.
Every time a person has agreed to an interview this year, it’s felt as though I won a round-trip ticket to a foreign county.
Getting to “travel” into other peoples’ “countries” has not only been exciting (cue the picture above), but it’s also been spiritual. There’s an adage that a volunteer gets as much or more out of the experience as the persons that they are volunteering for; the adage seems to apply to writers, too. My interviews have broadened my perspective and grown me in lots of little ways.
I’ll spend October doing more research and interviews, and I hope to write the anger article in November.