One year as a member of Suicidegirls, eight months since I did my first interview, with Sleater-Kinney, in January. 
What a year!
The Sleater-Kinney article was my first professional writing for anyone, ever, and I kindof laugh at how my methods have changed since then. I listened to every single Sleater-Kinney album a million times, taking notes. A week before the interview I had the questions COMPLETELY written out, down to their exact wording. When I typed it up I spent hours and hours AGONIZING over how I should edit it. I wanted it to read well, but I kindof felt like it was sacreligious to not put it down EXACTLY like she said it.
Nowadays I listen or read or watch a few of the works of whoever I'm interviewing, in proportion to how "big" the interview is. For example: Nada Surf = listened to their new album four or five times. Neil Gaiman = bought and read ten of his books. Heh. I read as many interviews with them as I can find on the web, and take notes on the questions they get asked a lot -- so that I don't ask them. I also try and find what seems to be their hot-button issues, things that I think they would be interested in talking about. Instead of writing the questions out exactly, I just write down key words for the issues I want to talk about. For example, with Gaiman, my notes looked like this:
MirrorMask
Online journal
Wolves in the Walls
Penthouse
Kids read Coraline as adventure
Smoke & Mirrors -- Goldfish pool
Music
Alan Moore
Tattoos
American Gods research
I find that if I have the questions all written out it feels more like.. an email interview and less like a conversation between two humans. On the other hand, if you have no notes.. you end up going "So.. uh.. read any good books lately?"
I also try and make sure that I ask a few questions about whatever it is that they're out promoting -- which is the whole reason they're doing interviews in the first place. But I like to make the interviews different than interviews you'd read other places. Maybe get to know the person a little better, even if that means not really talking about their work specifically. Who they are as a person is important to understanding the work they do.
On editing, after it's done, it takes me about 3 hours for every 20 minutes of tape. Most of the interviews are about 40-45 minutes long, so it can take well over 6 hours to type it up -- mostly due to having to write half of one sentence, rewind, listen again, etc. I edit my questions and their answers so that it reads well and makes sense. I don't change what they're saying, but I can sometimes make big changes to the way they said it. A lot of times an extra few hours is added in there depending on how many names they drop, have to look up how to spell their kid's name, or the name of the hotel they stayed at, or the obscure album/band name they're dropping. I take a lot of pride in editing this stuff, and I'm sure Erin has cussed me out a few times over my sending three versions of the same interview because I decided I didn't like a comma here or there. After it's all done I write the intro and the outro, and add a little bit of HTML for bold and italics and hyperlinks, and send it off for you kids to read!
When I was first getting started I got some great advice from the editor of the Onion on how they prepare and edit their interviews. That helped out a lot, because I love the Onion's interviews. Another alternaporn site was also an influence in trying to get people to talk about porn and sex. At first I didn't have the gonads to ask someone I'd never met before about that stuff though.
There are some things I'd still love to improve on. I'd love to have more interviews with female artists, in fact I'd like that to be the majority. I've contacted just about every female artist who's work I admire: from Debbie Harry to Le Tigre, and it just seems harder to get them to do an interview with a pr0n site. Easier now than it was when I started though, due to more people and especially publicists knowing what SG is.
It really is a great deal of fun, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.
What a year!
The Sleater-Kinney article was my first professional writing for anyone, ever, and I kindof laugh at how my methods have changed since then. I listened to every single Sleater-Kinney album a million times, taking notes. A week before the interview I had the questions COMPLETELY written out, down to their exact wording. When I typed it up I spent hours and hours AGONIZING over how I should edit it. I wanted it to read well, but I kindof felt like it was sacreligious to not put it down EXACTLY like she said it.
Nowadays I listen or read or watch a few of the works of whoever I'm interviewing, in proportion to how "big" the interview is. For example: Nada Surf = listened to their new album four or five times. Neil Gaiman = bought and read ten of his books. Heh. I read as many interviews with them as I can find on the web, and take notes on the questions they get asked a lot -- so that I don't ask them. I also try and find what seems to be their hot-button issues, things that I think they would be interested in talking about. Instead of writing the questions out exactly, I just write down key words for the issues I want to talk about. For example, with Gaiman, my notes looked like this:
MirrorMask
Online journal
Wolves in the Walls
Penthouse
Kids read Coraline as adventure
Smoke & Mirrors -- Goldfish pool
Music
Alan Moore
Tattoos
American Gods research
I find that if I have the questions all written out it feels more like.. an email interview and less like a conversation between two humans. On the other hand, if you have no notes.. you end up going "So.. uh.. read any good books lately?"
I also try and make sure that I ask a few questions about whatever it is that they're out promoting -- which is the whole reason they're doing interviews in the first place. But I like to make the interviews different than interviews you'd read other places. Maybe get to know the person a little better, even if that means not really talking about their work specifically. Who they are as a person is important to understanding the work they do.
On editing, after it's done, it takes me about 3 hours for every 20 minutes of tape. Most of the interviews are about 40-45 minutes long, so it can take well over 6 hours to type it up -- mostly due to having to write half of one sentence, rewind, listen again, etc. I edit my questions and their answers so that it reads well and makes sense. I don't change what they're saying, but I can sometimes make big changes to the way they said it. A lot of times an extra few hours is added in there depending on how many names they drop, have to look up how to spell their kid's name, or the name of the hotel they stayed at, or the obscure album/band name they're dropping. I take a lot of pride in editing this stuff, and I'm sure Erin has cussed me out a few times over my sending three versions of the same interview because I decided I didn't like a comma here or there. After it's all done I write the intro and the outro, and add a little bit of HTML for bold and italics and hyperlinks, and send it off for you kids to read!
When I was first getting started I got some great advice from the editor of the Onion on how they prepare and edit their interviews. That helped out a lot, because I love the Onion's interviews. Another alternaporn site was also an influence in trying to get people to talk about porn and sex. At first I didn't have the gonads to ask someone I'd never met before about that stuff though.
There are some things I'd still love to improve on. I'd love to have more interviews with female artists, in fact I'd like that to be the majority. I've contacted just about every female artist who's work I admire: from Debbie Harry to Le Tigre, and it just seems harder to get them to do an interview with a pr0n site. Easier now than it was when I started though, due to more people and especially publicists knowing what SG is.
It really is a great deal of fun, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.
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You make me feel pretty!