If they were all added up. I wonder how many people I've interviewed in my career. How many people's stories I've collected. How many quotes I've selected.
You'd think it would all boil down to a formula, but it doesn't. Everyone is different; everyone's story is unique.
These days I do a few interviews in person each week, a few others by phone, and a few others by email. The author interviews I do for Smashwords, the big ebook distributor, start with a phone interview, followed by a Q&A in email.
That way, there's no need to take notes or use a recorder, nor are there any worries about misquoting someone.
Still, even when the structure of an interview falls into a familiar pattern, because you are having a similar conversation to others about similar topics or ideas, the unique ways people see the world and tell their stories, reshapes even familiar territory into the new and wondrous.
That's why I like being a journalist, always finding out new things, always challenging my own assumptions. Being exposed to multiple perspectives on all kinds of things keeps me from falling into a rut of unexamined thinking, or descending into the echo chamber of group-think.
At least I hope it does.
***
My modest ebook appears to be selling modestly. I'm told it always starts like this. If that book is to ever go viral, it will be due to some precipitating event somewhere in the digital world that probably will have little to do with me, the author.
The book is available for the Kindle, the Nook, and simple PDFs for desktops and laptops; perhaps it's in other formats as well. I don't know. It wasn't a self-published book. Hyperink published it for me.
In that way I have not yet entered the world of self-publishing -- something so disrespected in the past it was dismissed as "vanity" publishing.
No longer. the stigma is gone. The folks I interview who've authored ebooks are making tens of thousands of dollars every quarter, and for a writer, that is some serious cash.
***
It might seem to some that the interviews I used to do, including of famous and prominent people, for bigger publications like Rolling Stone or Salon about weighty topics might have been more important types of work than my current short blog profiles of startups or ebook authors.
I don't see it that way. A person's story is their story, whether they are powerful or unknown, whether the narrative seems complex or relatively simple.
There's nothing simple about a life -- any life.
It's an honor when someone lets you in on their dreams, their hopes, and their fears. To be entrusted at whatever level with the opportunity to write about someone else is a feeling I never get tired of, and try to never abuse.
As journalists, we tell other peoples' stories; often they will never get to do that for themselves.
Every keystroke is like the beating of a heart. The rhythm of life, emerging in words, joining other words into a river of narrative.
Good or bad, nice or mean, dead or alive, the lives have mattered, and those of us who've witnessed them have an obligation to history to try and get these stories right.
Every time I post a new piece online, which averages around once a day, I hope that I got it right. Nothing bothers me more than hearing I made a mistake -- luckily these usually are minor and can be easily corrected, bu they still bother me enormously.
I'm not here to make mistakes, even if to err is human. I'm here to get it right.
***
Word reached me this week that an old friend is in the hospital after a heart attack. I haven't seen him in probably 14 years, but when our kids were young, our families were close, and we took a number of camping trips together.
One of my sisters also had to have an operation this week to repair a badly injured wrist after a fall.
These are reminders that age catches up with all of us.
***
I love Friday nights because the teens are here, and we make a nice night of it together, especially when they stay home, as they did tonight, rather than go out on their own on the town.
My daughter is back practicing soccer, now at the club level, and she will be playing in a tournament soon down at Stanford. I'm really proud of how she is sticking with the game, at an age when most girls abandon it.
She's a competitor at heart, though not excessively so. I can see that what motivates her is not so much being better than others as being part of a team that beats other teams.
There is a difference here and it is not subtle. Collective success as opposed to strictly individual success. I write a lot about team sports. I think they are good at building citizens.
As a society, we should be deeply concerned about creating good citizens -- people who understand what democracy is and care about preserving it, or at least the underlying tenets that imply equality, freedom, and compassion for all.
There are many dark forces in the world, and in this country, that would suppress these values. There are many misguided and uninformed voices demonizing those who hold different views or values.
It's troubling, but not necessarily fatal to our particular form of democracy. The context, for me, is this American system is imperfect. Its many flaws require civic engagement on many levels.
In the end, this large country is still a work in progress. I'm finding this election year the most boring in memory, but that doesn't mean I don't have opinions or views about how it should all turn out.
I'll probably slowly start writing more political posts here in the weeks t come, now Romney has reportedly chosen Paul Ryan as his V-P candidate, so the tickets are clear.
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