Writers love hearing about all kinds of people and all kinds of things...you never know when something will lead to an idea for a character, a setting, a plot. While there's no substitute for actually getting out there and meeting and watching people, a good interview is a very useful tool. That brings me to a blog I highly recommend, called "Read an Interview."
Every Monday Johan Dahlberg releases an in-depth interview with somebody and you never know who it's going to be. Recent interviewees include a trainer of police dogs, a woman who lives in Iceland, and the man who became the sixth person to go into space as a tourist.
The interviews are organized by themes like "war and disasters," "inspirational people," and "casual reads." For instance, one in the "behind the scenes" category features Theodora Lee talking about being a YouTube celebrity. Her brother, Caspar Lee, is a YT superstar with 4.5 million subscribers, while Theodora has about 200,000. (My own observation is that it helps to be young and good-looking and both she and her brother are.)
The site also has a little quiz that directs you to interviews you might like.
Warning: reading these interviews is addictive! It could be a good idea to use reading them as a reward when you've done the most important tasks for the day. Otherwise you might find, as I did, that you start reading and suddenly it's an hour later...
