Who is Elias Tobias? The real interview

Who is Elias Tobias?  The real interview

By an independent Internet publisher

IIP:
  Thank you for taking a few minutes of your time to talk with us today.

E.T.:  No problem. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the web blog.

IIP:  How long have you had the World of Words by Elias Tobias on the Internet?

E.T.: It will be 14 year this August, and four years with the new format and host.

IIP:  Who exactly is Elias Tobias?

E.T.: It’s no secret that Elias Tobias is a pen name, and the biographical information on the site gives the basic details of the real writer, Michael D. Hall.  The web blog is copyrighted by Hall, not Elias Tobias.  That’s a technical answer. Creatively, Elias Tobias is this person within that sees the world in a slightly different way, and writes about it in little stories called poems.

IIP:  Little stories?

E.T.:  Exactly.  I like to write short stories, and this style of writing involves complex creation of character, details of plot, developing some theme and other story elements. I used to be an English teacher for sixth grade students.  The poems that Elias Tobias writes are moments in time of a character in story, with the past details being implied or explicit.  The poem is how that character feels then, and the reader can possibly relate to that situation and anticipate that character’s future.

IIP:  Why do you write, then, and what is your inspiration?

E.T.: At first I started writing because it was easy for me to do, and I could express how I felt about things around me, but that sort of thinking is destined only for diaries.  There came a point when I wanted people to enjoy what I wrote. So I went away from the very personal nature of writing to a more public style, and names mentioned were not real people, but symbolic composites of people I knew.

IIP:  What is your inspiration, then?

E.T.: Anything and everything.  I may do a certain task over and over and realize something special about it, or I see something in a different way even though I’ve passed it 100 times before.  The media is my inspiration: music, TV, things I see and hear I react to them. My friends… my wife, Patty, is often an inspiration when she throws out a one-liner in conversation and it stick with me.

IIP:  About Patty, do you write poems just for her?

E.T.: Sometimes, but again I don’t get so personal that the poem doesn’t belong to anyone else.  She is my biggest fan, even though she rarely ever goes to the web site.  She reads and edits my poems, and she is often with me when I take many of the photographs.  For all those love poems that are in different situations than what we have, she realizes they are a product of my imagination, and not based  in fact.  We both support each other after 17 years of marriage.

IIP:  You are a trained photographer, and worked as one.  What value do photographs have in The World of Words by Elias Tobias?

E.T.:  They are big part of it, either as single or grouped photos in an individual post or as an illustration for a poem.  Adding a photo to a poem adds another dimension that can help or hurt the poem.  The photos used to illustrate poems have to be chosen carefully.  Graphically, the photos bring interest to the poem, but the images the reader gets from the poem may not match the interpretation given in the photograph.  When I see a good match, I use a photo.
The ArtBrushed series of photos are different in that they are converted photos to art-styled brushed paintings, and not every photo can make a good ArtBrushed photo.

IIP: 
There has been a recorded dramatic increase in the ranking of the World of Words? Why has this happened?

E.T.:
I don’t know. My web site hasn’t changed much over the last year or so, I am surprised at this.  For three years, I had a daily post and remained in the low 6 million world ranking. Now that I have reduced the number of the daily posts and wanted readers to look at what I have developed of the years, the monthly percentage has increase more than 1500 percent. I hope it continues. The challenge now is to make the web blog appealing to maintain the numbers, I suppose.  Do I change much or anything just to keep up the ratings?  Does it really matter? I started this thing with the hopes I would get noticed and someday get invited by a publisher to put together at least one book of my on poems, instead of contests that publish an anthology of many authors.  I just wanted people to read my poems.

IIP:  What do you say to those who don’t like your style of writing?

E.T.:  There are as many styles as there are writers, and there are at least 50,000 to 100,000 poetry web sites around the world. I am pleased that people like my work, but I know somewhere, someplace, a younger writer is starting his or her own blog.  I encourage that.   If people don’t like what I do, then they can start their own poetry site. I have an article on the World of Words that tells them how to do it.

IIP:  Okay, great. Now let’s get technical. You said you have an article about how to start a poetry web site.

E.T.:   Yes I do.  I learned the hard way, from experience. I didn’t know what Search Engine Optimization was and I was doing it at the same time. The medium is what helps carry the message.  Going to this new format and host four years ago has helped tremendously.  Now I have videos, podcasts, and other cool stuff. I could do more, but I want to keep costs down.  I’d like to have an app for the Smartphones, but that would be beyond what I can do myself.

IIP:  Do you have any advice for those poets just starting out with their own web sites?

E.T.:   Yes. Be yourself. Try to create a sense of self…a brand of sorts, so people can recognize your work.  This can be done by certain marketing and technical practices, but ultimately, it’s the words that carry the web site to its destiny.  Once a poem is out in cyberspace, it is free child, and you can’t control it really.  In a sense I have more than 200 children out there, not biologically or course, but symbolically. The poems are a part of me.

IIP:  Thank you for your time. Elias.
E.T:  Thanks for letting me tell the world who I am, and perhaps people can better understand my work.

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