Today I chat with Mike Daisey, a monologuist who is currently performing his Frey and Leroy-inspired piece "TRUTH {the heart is a million little pieces above all things}" at Ars Nova. He is also a commentator for National Public Radio's Day To Day, a contributor to the New York Times Magazine, WIRED, Slate, Salon, and his writing appears in the anthology The Best Tech Writing 2006. His first book, 21 Dog Years: A Cubedweller's Tale, was published by the Free Press.

How is writing a monologue different from writing a personal essay?
It's very different for me, as I don't write anything down, and create the monologues anew each night from a rough outline. This makes the monologues actually live the way stories do in the real world, and evolve in a natural way from telling to telling, which is highly different than the prescribed, timeless and (to me) rather dead world of text. The monologues are full of possibility and change--essays are fixed once written until revised, and can never be changed while being read. It's a very challenging form, but one that offers discoveries that I believe most theatrical forms are incapable of--it can be simultaneously extremely structured and chimerical, and ultimately most closely captures the narrative process at work in the human mind.

What advice do you have for writers who want to break into radio? How might they need to adapt their writing accordingly?
Time is a paramount concern in radio--there isn't any of it, and that
compression makes every moment count. Many of the skills that are
natural to a monologuist can be challenging to writers--vocal clarity
and intensity, breath control, enunciation--and even if the writer
isn't performing the words, you need to hear the words spoken to get
a sense of what you're actually writing. I find that people often
forget that what they are making isn't going to live as an essay, but
will instead be heard only once--so make certain you actually take
the time to listen to what it sounds like out loud. Many people
actually skip that step, and it's vital.

Did you encounter any legal problems writing 21 Dog Years? Would
you do anything differently if you wrote the book now knowing what you learned writing about a former employer that just happens to be a huge corporation?
I had no legal problems, aside from the chilling effect we all experience living in our culture that makes people doubt that their stories are their own, but instead belong to the corporation they were previously the bitch of. The only thing I would do differently now is speak even more firmly and clearly, having had more life experience watching people turn their lives over to corporations. People need to remember that corporations are constructs we created to take away liberties and increase profitability while minimizing personal accountability--just as corporations are incapable of human emotions like mercy, we should feel very little about imagined slights that accrue to them. They can take care of themselves, and they will, on the backs of everyone under them.

Do you think history is repeating itself at all with the dot-com boom with more publications and high-profile people putting money into blogs? Or it's a different scenario?
The only real difference is that people have realized that content is key, and that interconnectedness is central to generating content. This is as true today as it was five years ago, and even off the web, but when a culture comes to a new idea and embraces it you get a stampede of valuations, some of which will look ridiculous in hindsight. It's just the irrational exuberance of the market reacting to an old proverb told in a new and exciting way, and what will matter more than the valuations and cash flow is how these organizations will weather downturns, which is when the character of any undertaking is tested. For this generation that remains to be seen.

Do you have any advice for writers, editors, playwrights on how
to have a smooth working/personal life with their significant others?
I would, of course, advise people to do as I've done, and collaborate intensively with one person who understands and challenges you, right down to the core--and then marry that person, and spend every last waking minute with them. Put all your eggs in one basket and work like hell, that's what I say--a marriage without art and work is not imaginable to me. It can be hell, but it's also ecstatic, collaborative and deeply moving to be so close to someone in all parts of my life--and it ensures that we have to communicate, or we'll never survive. The stakes are very high, and I like that.