The Autistic Writer: Interviews

tyunglebower ♦ August 2, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

Taken as a whole, my writing usually falls under either fiction, or creative non-fiction. (personal essays or books about writing itself.) As a sometime freelance contributor, to a regional magazine in particular, about a quarter of what I work on requires interviewing others.
As you might imagine, my Autism plays a larger role in this than perhaps any other aspect of my writing career.

Don’t misunderstand; I am not afraid of the people I talk to for me, (mostly) human interest profile pieces. The vast majority of them live and work in the same general communities as I do. That provides at least a tertiary level reference point between us. Even without that slight connection fear isn’t the problem.

However, depending on several factors, I think of Edgar Allen Poe’s opening line to his story The Tell Tale Heart:

“True! Nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am…”

That probably overstates the issue, but I do love that line.

Unlike Poe’s protagonist, the nerves I feel before an interview are not due to guilt, nor as I mentioned to fear. I liken it more to bracing for impact. Not a deliberate impact from a malevolent force, mind you. More like a large piece of debris blown toward your car in a violent storm. It’s coming, you know it’s coming, and you can’t do a damn thing about it but keep an eye on it, and prepare yourself for the blow.

Neither the debris nor the gale has personal feelings against you, they just exist in proximity to you. Doesn’t mean you won’t get shaken up when the wayward yield sign slams into your windshield.

The further someone on the Spectrum is from their safest, most comforting scenario, the more energy they require to meet expectations. If socializing is involved, more energy is required. If socializing with a stranger, greater levels still. And if it’s part of your job? A full day of doing nothing in order to prepare for the interview, followed by a full day to recover afterwards is not uncommon for me. That kind of energy and focus cannot simply be thrown around at will by someone with ASD. What drains them may vary, but the act of being drained is common to just about all Autistic people.

Not to mention the particular frustrations of setting up an appointment with the interview subject. It almost always requires the telephone, which I despise.

And because I consider it part of my job to assure the subject of the interview is comfortable, given that they are doing me a favor, I usually meet them at a location of their own choosing. Eight times out of ten, it’s a local place that I have nonetheless rarely or never visited before. Not a problem in its own right, but by the time I’ve looked up where it is, the directions, where to park, and acclimated myself to the surroundings, half my energy for the interaction is already depleted.

Compounding everything is the ever-present frenemy of all professional writers: a deadline.
Sure, give me two months to research, plan, and prepare for an interview with the bookstore owner 20 minutes outside of my familiar city, and almost nothing will detract from the interview itself. For most assignments involving interviews I get between two and three weeks. It often takes a week just to reach the right person, even with a phone. (Which once again I will mention, I hate using.)

Once the interview begins, and I get an initial notion of how the other person talks, how comfortable they are and so on, my nerves stabilize. They may never reach resting comfort, but I’m able to move them to the side and ask my questions, listen to their answers, and it’s almost always professional-pleasant.
I go home, lay in bed for a while in silence, and then start mapping out the final piece that I will write over the follow days. My various editors are happy with it, and all is well.

Eventually. But not after almost every common Autistic trigger is initiated, and I feel like doing nothing else at all for a while.

Now that I think of it, aside from the obvious fact I am not a murderer, Poe’s dramatic line may be a better descriptor of my nerves before an interview than I first thought.