By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Although I don’t do a ton of interviews,
I probably do a live or recorded interview every few months. I especially like the recorded ones because I
figure if I say something dumb, they can edit it all out and make me look as if
I know what I’m talking about. :)
I’ve learned from my mistakes in the past
with these things, too. I think of my
house as being a very quiet place, but apparently, judging from my interview
experiences, there is actually plenty of noise pollution there. The pets, for one. My corgi will bark at the cats, at the
doorbell, and sometimes when she wants to go outside. The cats are male litter-mates and fight tooth
and nail with each other. Various
appliances make buzzer-like alarms when they’re done running. My UPS guy feels the need to hit the doorbell
when he drops off a package (I do appreciate this, but it makes the
aforementioned barking happen).
I try to schedule interviews when no one
is at home. This has worked with 90% of
my Skype interviews. But I’ve got some kind of radio-related curse. Whenever I have a radio interview, and the
ones I’ve done have unfortunately all been live, I will most certainly have a
sick child or a snow day on my hands (with school canceled). This is one reason
I know it’s a curse—y’all know it doesn’t snow down here in the American South
all that often.
So here’s
the checklist that I use before an interview, in the hopes it can help you out,
too:
Where are the children? Have I told them what I’m doing, so that they
won’t accidentally disturb me? Regardless of the fact you’ve told them about
the interview, put a sticky note on your door so that they’ll remember before
they knock.
Put the dog in a back bedroom.
Put the cats away (in a separate room
from the dog).
Put a sticky note on the door asking
Fed-X, UPS, and the mailman not to ring the doorbell.
Put my cellphone away or mute it.
Have water nearby. I will immediately have a coughing fit,
guaranteed, whenever I’m supposed to be recorded.
Skype
specific:
Do a sound/video check.
Turn on lots of lights in the house and
provide backlighting, too.
Wear lots more makeup than usual. Or, in
my case, wear make-up, period.
Pull out my webcam. It seems to be much
better-quality than the one that came with my laptop.
Remember not to look at the computer,
where I see the interviewer. I need to
look in the camera, or else I look distracted.
What’s in the background? Do I need to
dust? :)
Books.
Have a book nearby that I can hold up…if it’s that kind of
interview. Sometimes it’s not a promo
thing, it’s a craft thing and I might just have books on my dusted table in the background.
Radio and
podcast specific:
Don’t use my cellphone to call in. Use the house phone.
Turn off call waiting if you have it.
They’re fond of hearing the station’s
call letters in the broadcast.
For any
interview:
See if I can get the questions in
advance. It helps me give a more
thoughtful answer and just provides them with better content, in general.
Be able to sum up your book in one
sentence because you’ll usually be asked to tell the interviewer about your
most-recent release or what you’re working on now.
Last week’s interview was with Gabriela Pereira with DIYMFA for Lit Loft writing conference
and online course. You can see a little
of what we touched on at Gabriela’s site, here.
Have any tips I’ve missed about
interviews? Have you been
interviewed? How did it go?