I got to redeem my birthday present without any coupons! No work involved. Just sit back and enjoy the love.

I did of course look up where exactly Lorelle lived, but intentionally never mentioned where it is nor did I try to give an accurate description. Instead I worked in a couple of elements that I knew would be true of the region in general. It was merely to break the explanatory setting and set the tone of the interview.

I believe this is where you have to tread carefully because you are drawing someone else into a setting they may not want to be in. So just because I know where Lorelle lives (from the return address of the envelope containing her book btw.) does it give me no right to write extensively about it and I never would without having asked permission first.

The idea of the virtual interview as form was actually the child of two ideas so to speak. I wanted to try to make a sort of round table post with a handful bloggers giving spontaneous answers to various concepts and I wanted to try a new way of writing link posts. Since it is practically impossible to get 5 bloggers to do anything simultaneously did I consider just pretending they were and hence the idea was born.

Since it is hard to make a multiple questions post with more people being virtually interviewed without it being way too long and complicated to follow did I settle for two people and more questions the first time. Looking back on it am I not particularly pleased with it, but as a first try was it alright. The second attempt with more people and only one question worked better and hence did I reply the same formula only reversed here.

Vivien, you should definitely give it a try. It is more work that merely quoting and binding those quotes together, but you can get another flow going both when writing and reading it when doing it this way. I already noted the idea of trying this with the ancient philosophers etc as well, but so far has it been pushed back by other projects and the fact that they wrote less conversationally and hence less appropriate for this sort of thing.

Terry, the three times I have done this so far I just went ahead and did it. The first time I thought long and hard about it, but decided that I broke whether written or unwritten rules since I don’t pull more than more licenses allow and also take great care in attributing what I used. The reactions have been only positive thus far and if you take great care how you do it and make sure that everyone end up looking good I really don’t see how anyone could mind you doing this.

Lorelle knew absolutely nothing about this until she read it on her blog. She may have expected it, but I don’t think so as I have made no hint whatsoever to planning it. Since this is a birthday I guess surprises are welcome either way, but if in doubt then ask first. Most of the work and half the joy is actually exploring peoples articles to find answers so I prefer doing that myself.

Taking an idea and twisting it is what this is all about so I hope it works out. There is nothing wrong with applying what you know works, but sometimes you have to take a chance and try something new. Some of the inspiration for thinking that way is probably one of the first articles that I wrote, which is about Albert Einstein and how his special gifts could be applied to blogging.