“Paul Kaiser: Aspiring Biographer?”
I don’t know, it’s just something I came up with. I was doing an exercise to try rooting out personal interests and strengths that may have been buried over the past twenty years. A few different items came together and made me think of writing biographies.
What lead to this?
- I love talking with new people, finding out what they’re about, digging down to find what they’re really about.
- I love writing, period.
- I love drama. I mean real life drama.
- I love to explore, whether it’s new places or new perspectives.
Somehow, that all came together to say I might like writing biographies.
Biographies?
But I don’t want to write stuffy, boring biographies like:
“Here’s this rich guy who doesn’t have anything better to do than have a biography written about him.”
I also don’t want to write feature stories in the Sunday paper like:
“Here’s Joe Blow the Vice President of Pencil Pushing at Local Inc., stay in school, don’t do drugs, drink your milk and you can be like him.”
Personal histories, ah!
Friendly guy on Walnut St.
I would want to interview and write about people walking on the street. People with problems. People who have been through hell and abuse, or maybe are still going through it. People who aren’t sure where they are going, except to say they are walking North on Whatsit Ave. at this very moment.
Plausible?
But why would people want to be interviewed? Why would they take the time? Why would they possibly divulge any personal nuggets that could make such a personal biography interesting, revealing, and insightful?
I don’t know.
Try it?
Maybe I should just try it and see what happens. There’s definitely and element of “going out of your comfort zone” here. People might totally think I’m nuts or something. I can print up some little cards, with some sort of logo and short explanation of what I’m talking about. I suppose I could approach someone, ask them for an interview, hand them a card if they are like “what?!” and see if they change their mind or pass it along later.
Can’t hurt. Unless the cops get called on me for being a nuisance or something.
There could be a website for that.
I looked up domain names (my favorite pasttime, it seems) and wanted “untilnow.com,” but someone else already has that. She isn’t really using it yet, though. It sounds like she has the same idea in mind, but more along the lines of the Vice President of Pencil Pushing than the Abused Self-Medicator. I emailed her to ask what she was up to and if she had any advice, but she didn’t respond.
Rude.
UPDATE:
Okay, I’m working on it. I have a site now called “Not the Usual Story” at http://usualstory.com. I’m trying to formulate the best way to approach the kinds of people I want to interview, and we’ll see if this goes anywhere. It could be fun!
