The first interview I ever did as a professional writer started out as the worst interview I ever did as a professional writer.
I had recently transitioned out of a 20-year teaching career and into a provisional position creating “web content” for an Ivy League college of engineering. The school had just paid several hundred thousand dollars to a marketing firm to create a new brand for the college. They needed lots of written stories for their website to highlight the new tagline and signed me to a six-month contract.
For years I had harbored quiet aspirations that someday I would be a professional writer. So it was thrilling to suddenly find myself getting paid to be that very thing. Additionally, I have always been a total science geek, and in my new position I found myself surrounded by professors and students doing cutting edge work in fields as diverse as biomedical, civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering.
Driving to campus shortly after starting the position, I heard on the local public radio station that one of the faculty members at the college had just been named a MacArthur Genius. I parked the car, went straight to my boss’s office, and proposed writing a profile of the newly-minted genius. She went for the idea and I emailed the professor right away, requesting an interview.
He was game, and we agreed to meet the following morning in his office.
It took me longer than it should have to find his office. It was in a building on a part of campus I had not yet been to. Worse, the system they had used to number the offices in that building had no obvious logic. So I did not get to the genius’s room until the exact moment I was supposed to, which for me feels like being ten minutes late. I did not have time to take a deep breath, collect my thoughts, and calm down.
Still, I felt okay knocking and going in because I had spent a solid four hours the previous day finding out all I could about the professor and his work—which was in an area where physics and materials science overlap. It was a real slog for me to get through descriptions of the field in general and of his work in particular. But by the time I knocked on his door and pushed it open at his “come in,” I felt pretty good.
I felt ready.
In college back in the 1980s I had worked as an editor for the student newspaper and had developed a lifelong love of yellow legal pads. Twenty-five years later, when I was hired to be a writer, the first thing I did was go to Staples and buy a 10-pack of yellow legal pads. As I entered the professor’s office I clutched one of those pads, and it had the results of my hours of research written two-to-a-page in blue ink.
Remember—I had never conducted an interview and had no real idea of what I was doing. So I had written out interview questions on the yellow pages, one at the top of each page and one halfway down. I figured this would give me plenty of space to write down what the genius was saying and to capture any useable quotations. I assumed an interview would follow a logical progression, dictated by the questions asked. I was proud of the progression of questions I had crafted the previous day. (It may even have struck me that this yellow legal pad would end up in the science writer’s hall of fame one day in recognition of the brilliant way I had led the interviewee to unexpected and revealing places that shined a light on his particular genius…)
But as you can probably guess, that is not what happened. I had agonized over the first question, figuring it would set the tone for what followed. I didn’t want to be cliché and ask about where he was born or if he had been one of those kids who liked to take things apart. No, I wanted to ask something surprising that would get the reader right into his mind immediately. I had written and then crossed out literally dozens of questions before I settled on the one that I thought wouldn’t just break the ice but would instead shatter the ice and allow for the most amazing interview of this professor’s life.
He sat down; I sat across from him and let fly:
Q—“On my way to work a few days ago I heard someone on the radio call you a genius. And then again in my office I heard several other people refer to you with that same word: genius. It seems everyone is calling you a genius. What I want to know is, who do you think of as a genius?”
I should mention at this point that he was sitting cross-legged on a tattered couch, bare feet glowing an almost-unnatural white, hands clasping his knees, coke-bottle glasses magnifying his eyes so it looked like he was trying to melt me with his stare. He released his grip on his knees and crossed his arms tightly across his chest.
A—I’ve always hated the word “genius”…
And then he just trailed off into silence, alternating between eye contact and looking at his own feet.
I could feel the panic rising quickly in me as I looked at the next question I had planned to ask, and then at the one after that, and the one after that. It was one of the clearest “aha” moments I have ever experienced: I knew instantly that none of these preplanned questions were going to get me anywhere with him. He was closing down and I knew I had to come up with a Plan B and I had to do it fast.
To buy a little time I said, “Is that a Philly accent I’m hearing?” as my brain scrambled to find a way to get things back on track. I was flipping through my notes and trying desperately to remember what I had read about his research the day before, thinking maybe he would be more forthcoming about his research than he was about geniuses.
He said, “Yeah. I’m from Philly…but I didn’t think I had much of the accent. Are you from Philadelphia?” I told him I grew up just south, in suburban Wilmington, Delaware. I mentioned that one of my brothers had gone to Villanova. The genius had also gone to Villanova, so we chatted about that a little and I noticed that he had uncrossed his arms and relaxed the rest of his body a bit. We were having a conversation, but the stuff we were talking about was not anything I had scripted out. I could feel my wheels turning, trying to figure out how to get back on the track I wanted to be on.
But then a funny thing happened. I got curious about what he was saying about his time at Villanova. He mentioned punk rock and powerlifting and being a bouncer at a bar and doing terribly on standardized tests. So I asked him questions about those things. And his answers to those questions led to even more interesting places, and before long we were deep into a really enjoyable conversation that found its own natural way to his work and to the topic of genius.
I was scribbling notes furiously the entire time and by the end of the hour my hand hurt, but I felt really good about how the interview had gone. I went back to my office and typed up notes to myself. And then over the following week wrote a 1500-word profile that, to this day, is one of my favorite pieces of writing. I felt like I was able to capture something of the man that rang true. I sent him the first draft and then checked my inbox dozens of times over the six agonizing hours it took him to write back. You have to remember—this was the first real interview and profile I had ever done.
I was 48 years old and about to be told by a genius whether I was any good at my new job. Finally, at 6:36 p.m., while getting ready to eat dinner, I heard the ding of an incoming email. It was from the professor and I opened it to find the first five words: “Hi Chris, This is awesome.”
This. Is. Awesome.
That short declarative sentence brought me so much joy. And confidence. And trust in myself.
It is no exaggeration to say that his reply changed my life. From that day on, when people asked what I do for a living, I was able to say without any hemming or hawing or qualifiers “I am a writer.”
I never again went into an interview with a list of questions. I still do my research before I sit to talk with someone and I know there are certain things I want to get to, but that first disastrous five minutes of that first interview taught me something that guides every interview I do to this day: it is all about listening.
I believe that when given a chance and a sincerely curious audience, most people really do like talking about themselves. And if you listen you can hear something in their voice when they seemingly parenthetically mention that they took ballet lessons for years or that they play the oboe or that they failed freshman physics.
That little intangible something you can hear is your cue to ask more about that very thing. An interview is a conversation, not a Q and A session. And because it’s a conversation you have to leave space for it to go anywhere. You have to listen. Whether it is a slight Philly accent you hear, or maybe a passing reference to a great high school math teacher someone had, or a throw away comment about maybe starting a company someday, if you are listening and curious, you’ll follow up and sometimes that will lead to gold.
