I had my first Twinterview the other day.
Angelo Fernando of Hoi Polloi interviewed me and Yang-May on Twitter about the book.
What an interesting experience…. You feel suspended in cyberspace. You know there are people out there following you… but all you can see are your interviewer’s Tweets.
The fact that you have to limit your answers to 140 characters is a great discipline. It helps to organise your thoughts.
I have been converted…. I believe Twinterviews are great training for podcast and video interviews. Think of a 140-character answer first and then elaborate on that.
The toughest question, as ever, was about the reasons that lead me to write the book: “Was there a book inside your head?”
In order to answer that, you need to put your life in perspective.
Luckily, I am reading a book that has helped me to do just that.
If you began your career in journalism, you have to read Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler.
It’s a wonderful example of how journalism and writing helps you to understand complex realities and relate to people in cultures so different from your own.
It was a sentence in the book that brought it all home to me. Hessler describes his years in Beijing like a “floating life in a floating city”.
When I lived in Prague in the early 1990s, I often had the feeling of floating…. Oracle Bones made me realise that I wasn’t lost… Prague was floating towards a new future and was taking me along. While doing this, it was also writing my future book in my head.
Never underestimate the power of floating…
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