Byloos. Bosworth. Interview madness. Or is it loveliness?

No it isn't Sunday, which may screw-up our new found interest in highlighting interviews we are digging on Sundays, but when we came across this interview, discussion really, between long time TBWCYL, Inc. favorite and This Podcast Will Change Your Life podcastee Mel Bosworth and new favorite Matty Byloos from the quite compelling Small Doggies we just felt like we couldn't wait one more minute to post something, frankly, we can barely get through the post itself, so here it is, enjoy, excerpt, loveliness, all of it.

Matty Byloos: Talk to me about your writing process. I always find that it takes something absurd, monumental, curious, or otherwise completely off-putting for me to feel like using the writing process as a kind of pseudo-journalism, a way of unpacking the human experience and speaking to things that we all share. Is this something that sounds familiar? Or is writing a totally different experience for you, in practice?

Mel Bosworth: Yeah, no, that totally sounds familiar to me. Sometimes I’m inspired to write when I have one of those — and I hate to say it — “a-ha” moments, and I’m curious if I can translate that moment well in written form. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be some earth-shattering revelation, although it can be that, too. It could be something as simple as an overheard conversation, or a simple line, even, like a mother saying to her kid in the grocery store, “Put that back on the shelf.” Maybe the kid can’t have “that” because he’s obese, or maybe because there’s some ingredient in “that” that his body can’t tolerate, or maybe they can’t afford “that,” or maybe “that” reminds the mother of her dead child’s favorite cereal.

But yes, it definitely takes something, something external, something I’ve experienced, personally, to lure me to the desk. It’s when I actually have an idea that the writing comes easily. When I don’t have an idea, and I come to the desk, let the pointless, loathsome, time-wasting Internet laps begin. And it’s at these empty times that I have to remind myself to walk away, to read a book, to go outside, to go to a grocery store, to… live.

I have to remind myself to get out and live. Sure, much can be learned (and experienced) from a life of solitude and deep contemplation, but it’s damn fun sometimes to bounce myself off of other people, like, people I can poke and annoy, maybe even love. That’s where the good writing juice is, I think.