The Boston Globe published my fourth guest column this week.  My editor there suggested I talk about the anthrax affair.  At first I thought I couldn’t write about something so complicated in only 700 words, but once I began, I found I could say something.  I think we novelists get so accustomed to a giant canvas, that we forget we can write small as well.  It’s been so good for me to live for a time with a weekly deadline and a strict word limit.

Here is the essay, which I titled:  “Our Dark Materials”

           How quickly
we forget.  In the aftermath of 9-11,
after the memorials, the attacks on Afghanistan
and Iraq, and the bombs in London and Madrid,
the anthrax scare slipped from public consciousness.  Now, long articles detail the results of a
troubled investigation into the anonymous anthrax tainted letters of September
2001.  With the cruel elegance of a Greek
tragedy, Bruce Ivins, the scientific advisor on the matter became the prime
suspect in the case, and its sixth murder victim as well, when he killed
himself on July 29.  Suddenly anthrax is
back in the news, and we remember those chilling block printed messages: DEATH
TO AMERICA.  We recall the postal
screenings, the warnings about unknown addresses, and the lock down of mail
rooms and government offices.

            At the
time, the anthrax letters seemed part of the larger offensive launched by Al
Queda.  Now we understand them
differently, as the project of a deranged scientist in a federal laboratory.  We wonder how this disturbed man could
continue working to refine such dangerous substances.  We marvel that an investigator researching a
vaccine for anthrax could also be the man who used the pathogen to such evil
ends.  Conspiracy theorists will have a
field day.  Was Ivins looking for more
funding for his vaccine research?  Was
the government trying to frame him, to cover up for larger, deeper plots?  Surely the FBI investigation was as poisonous
as the powdery substance in those envelopes. 
Secrecy for years, and a 5.8 million dollar pay off for Ivin’s embattled
colleague, Steven Hatfill.  This material
is perfect for gadfly film maker Oliver Stone, or even better, for the moody
blue novelist John Le Carre.  The story
has it all: a mad scientist in thrall with his deadly subject, investigators
caught up in their inquiry–each player tainted by his own work.  In Shakespeare’s famous words, each “nature .
. . subdued / To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.”

            Beyond
these elements, the story plays into the public fear of scientists and their
techniques.  How important our
truth-seekers have become, and how easily they can turn their tools to violent
ends.  These are the recurring nightmares
illustrated in classic Science Fiction, Fantasy, and comic books: our own
machines mutiny, our genetically engineered organisms attack us, and most
frightening, our scientists mutate into forces for evil.  For now, it seems, a rogue investigator
proves more dangerous than rogue nations. 
Even as we benefit from advances in communication and medicine and engineering,
we distrust innovators.  We predict
they’ll fly too high, and look for confirmation that their intelligence
corrupts them.  The fear runs deep, old
as Icarus and Frankenstein and
witches’ poisoned apples.

Why do we distrust
scientists?  Because, although we’d
rather shake our heads at politicians, and ogle celebrities and the super rich,
we know in our hearts that knowledge is power. 
Scientists work with substances that can cure or kill.  Their research will change, and even save our
lives, and so we look at them with awe, and superstition.  We don’t fully understand the laboratory, and
so we mythologize investigators as heroes or demons–often both at once.  We’re dazzled by scientists’ success and
saddened, yet also strangely satisfied when they fall. 

            And yet we
crave the fruits of scientific labor.  We
desire cheaper food, and faster computers, better health, and alternative fuel,
but we’re shocked that research takes so long and costs so much.  We want innovation without damage to the ecosystem,
drugs without side effects, manufacturing without toxic waste.  We want all the benefits of the future
without giving up the comforts of the past. 
Improvement without cost, change without hard choices.  Is this too much to ask?  Well, yes, but we keep asking anyway.  Ultimately, we project our conflicting
expectations onto the men and women in the field, and we look to them with love
and hate, demanding oracles, requiring greatness, and burdening them with
praise and blame.  Only the technology is
new.  The role scientists play is old and
tribal: they are our shamans, and we expect miracles, even as we dread black
magic. 

I’ve been working steadily on my essays for The Globe.   Very satisfying to write them every week!  This one was published under the headline “Lost in the Internet Age”–but I like my Foresteresque title better:  “Only Connect.”

Here it is. Enjoy!

    As we were packing for our summer in Israel, our
twelve your old declared, “There’d better be internet in our apartment.”

            “Why?” I
teased. “Can’t you survive without it?”

            He
retorted, “If we don’t have internet, I’ll be DISCONNECTED!”

            What a
dreadful fate–to be severed from Gchat, from Starcraft, from up to the moment
Red Sox news.  My children cannot imagine
an off-line world.  In their short
digital lives, the typewriter dates from the iron age, and the record player is
a preschool toy for making spin art. 
Cameras with film–mysteries of the past. 
Darkrooms, Dark Ages.  

            As media
change, messages change as well. 
Acronyms abridge conversation, and texting substitutes for phone
calls.  “Remember calling a girl and
asking her to the prom?  That was a big
deal,” mused one of my friends.  “What do
kids do now?  Leave word on
Facebook?”  Arguably, kids converse as
much as ever.  It’s the rhythms of
conversation that have changed.  My
children don’t know what it’s like to wait days, or even minutes, for a
letter.  For them, correspondence is not
a give and take between two people, but a palimpsest of comments from large
groups.  What’s lost?  Occasion to compose thoughts in
paragraphs.  Practice developing an
argument without interruption.  Time to
breathe.

            Post and
riposte, we live in an interactive age. 
In the past, we watched the news. 
Now, we email it to others with comments.  In the past, we read reviews.  Now we post our own.  Everyone’s a critic, and a web-published one
at that.  Access and anonymity mean we
can write freely on any topic.  While
gossip, lies, and pornography spread virally, so does evidence and
information.  Oppressive governments
struggle and fail to tamp down photographs and first person accounts which slip
out electronically.  If the world on line
looks like the wild west, where mail order brides and scams await, that world
is also radically open, a boon to dissident points of view.  The collaborative Wikipedia keeps
growing.  Amateurs study photos on line
and classify stars for astronomers at galaxyzoo.com.  One Dutch school teacher has even identified
a new celestial object. 

            At times
anarchic and irresponsible, public discourse seems richer than before.  It’s private discourse that worries me.  Indeed, what is private these days?  The personal diary becomes a public blog.  The letter of complaint becomes an anonymous
screed.  At the touch of a button, a
message intended for a particular recipient becomes a public forum tagged,
“reply to all.”

            I have
little nostalgia for old technology per se. 
I don’t care that my son can’t remember typewriters.  I do care that he learn to write without
abbreviations and sign his name.  I want
to raise a son who takes responsibility for his opinions and discerns the
difference between topics of general interest and personal rants.  Schools brief parents on internet safety, but
beyond the obvious, other subtle dangers lurk on-line.  I’m thinking of rampant egotism,
self-aggrandizement, and vulgarity in the form of confessions and epinions
sprayed on the endless virtual wall.  We
live in the age of too much information. 
We are so quick to spill and judge and send each other links.  But anonymous posts lack the authority of
signed letters.  Hypertext will only take
you so far, if you can’t sift fact from rumor or evaluate sources or gage
context.  Multitasking and moment by
moment news updates and email alerts subvert concentrated thought  So much of what we say has to do with how we
say it.  As yet there is no search engine
for nuance on the web, nor do our computers come with irony buttons. 

Perhaps what’s missing in our
instant access world is hesitation.  The
pause in conversation or correspondence–and with that pause, a moment to
reflect.  Missing as well, the stillness
of printed words linked only to the reader’s mind and to each other.  “I miss reading the newspaper in the morning,”
my son admitted after several weeks in Israel. 

“You can get it all online,” I
reminded him.

“I know,” he said, “but it’s not
the same.  I like to turn the pages.”

Today The Boston Globe published my second guest column.  I was flattered when a composer friend told me that what I write here applies to music as well! 

Here is my essay:

So You Want to Be a Writer

 
When people hear that I’m a novelist, I get one comment more
than any other.  “I’m a physician (or a
third grade teacher, or a venture capitalist) but what I really want to do is
write.”  A mother of three muses:  “I’ve always loved writing since I was a
little girl.”  A physicist declares,
“I’ve got a great idea for a mystery-thriller-philosophical-love story–if I
only had the time.”  I nod, resisting the
temptation to reply:  “And I have a great
idea for a unified field theory–if I just had a moment to work it out on paper.” 

Book sales are down, but creative writing enrollments are
booming.  The longing to write knows no
bounds.  A lactation consultant told me,
“I have a story inside of me.  I mean, I
know everybody has a story, but I really
have a story.” 

Forthwith, some advice for those of you who have always
wanted to write, those with bestselling ideas, and those who really have a
story.

To begin, don’t write
about yourself.  I’m not saying you’re
uninteresting.  I realize that your life
has been so crazy no one could make this stuff up.  But if you want to be a writer, start by
writing about other people.  Observe
their faces, and the way they wave their hands around.  Listen to the way they talk.  Replay conversations in your mind–not just
the words, but the silences as well.  
Imagine the lives of others.  If
you want to be a writer, you need to get over yourself.  This is not just an artistic choice; it’s a
moral choice.  A writer attempts to
understand others from the inside. 

 
Find a peaceful place
to work.  Peace does not necessarily
entail an artists’ colony or an island off the coast of Maine. 
You might find peace in your basement, or at a cafe in Davis Square, or
amidst old ladies rustling magazines at the public library.  Peace is not the same as quiet.  Peace means you avoid checking your email
every ten seconds.  Peace means you are
willing to work off-line, screen phone calls, and forget your to do list for an
hour.  If this is difficult, turn off our
web browser, or try writing without a computer altogether.  Treat yourself to pen and paper and make a
mess, crossing out sentences, crumpling pages, inserting paragraphs in margins.
  Remember spiral bound notebooks, and thank
you notes with stamps?   Handwriting is arcane in all the best
ways.  Writing in ink doesn’t feel like
work; it feels like secret diaries and treasure maps and art.

Read widely, and
dissect books in your mind. What, exactly, makes David Sedaris funny?  How does Orwell fill us with dread?  If you want to be a novelist, read novels new
and old, satirical, experimental, Victorian, American.  Read nonfiction as well.  Consider how biographers select details to
illuminate a life in time.  If you want
to write nonfiction, study histories and essays, but also read novels and think
about narrative, and the novelist’s artful release of information.  Don’t forget poetry.  Why? 
Because it’s good to go where words are worshipped, and essential to
remember that you are not a poet.  Lyric
poets linger on a mood or fragmentary phrase; prose writers must move along to
tell their story, and catch their train.

And this is true for everyone, but especially for women:  If you
don’t value your own time, other people won’t either.  Trust me, you can’t write a novel in stolen
minutes outside your daughter’s tap class.  Virginia Woolf declared that a woman needs a
room of her own.  Well, the room won’t
help, if you don’t shut the door.  Post a
note. “Book in progress, please do not disturb unless you’re bleeding.”  Or these lines from Coleridge, which I have
adapted for writing mothers:  “. . .
Beware!  Beware! / Her flashing eyes, her
floating hair!  Weave a circle round her
thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, / For she on honey-dew hath fed,
/ and drunk the milk of Paradise.”

I have signed on as guest columnist for The Boston Globe
for the next six weeks.  I’m not used to
such short deadlines, but I’m having a good time! 

 Here is my first piece on this week’s opening of the Olympic
Games in Beijing:

 
The Olympics

 
Our children have been counting the days until the Olympic
Games.  The two younger kids even drew
calendars for themselves with uneven squares, which they planned to X off as
each day passed.  Just six and nine years
old, they forgot this plan after a couple of days, but they remain
excited.  How do they know about the
Games?  The same way small children know
about Mickey Mouse and Disneyland, Barbie and
Harry Potter.  Global advertising
penetrates our house and leaves a fine dust on every surface.

The Games are supposed to be more than cartoon characters,
or dolls, or fantasylands, however.  They
pit human athletes against each other with all the sweat, dust and tears of
real competition.  Or do they?  While my children imagine glorious races in Beijing, the world of
sport seems an increasingly murky place. The kids imagine gold medals, and I
fret about China‘s crackdown
in Tibet.  They gaze at photographs of Michael Phelps
knifing through crystalline water, and I hear about endorsement contracts.  They watch on television as basketball
players seem to leap cross court in a single stride.  I read articles about superstars too busy to
attend the Games. 

My children believe in heroes.  I want heroes too, but real life gets in the
way.  How can I watch China‘s Olympic divers without
recalling the reports that some are competing with injuries, sacrificing
themselves for national pride, and a chance at an apartment?  How can I watch the runners’ rippling bodies
without remembering Marion Jones?  She
looked magnificent in Sydney,
but last year she admitted doping, after which she lost her medals and her
vaunted invincibility.  I wonder what
will happen to the inspirational children’s biographies of Jones and other
disgraced athletes.   Will the authors
attempt new editions?  Or will the books
simply vanish from the shelves of public libraries?  The media frenzy surrounding Jones was real,
but her records were not. 

The Olympics strive to be different, extraordinary, but
Olympic athletes are the same people competing the rest of the year, and a
venal sporting culture does not come clean in a moment for the Games–certainly
not for a specially televised Olympic Moment. 
We live in a world that rewards results at almost any cost, a world where
steroid use plagues baseball, and Tour de France cyclists routinely test
positive for doping.  This summer’s
pre-Olympics cycling spectacle hardly inspires hope.  Week after week, it seems, successive newly
crowned Tour leaders are disqualified, testing positive for banned
substances.  Last year’s overall winner,
Floyd Landis, had to give up his title, despite his legal protests.

Are athletes persecuted? 
As he won his seventh consecutive Tour, Lance Armstrong stood at the Arc
de Triomphe and shot back at skeptics: 
“I’m sorry you can’t dream.  I’m
sorry you don’t believe in miracles.” 
Perhaps he felt the doping police singled him out unfairly.  I can’t speak for them.  I can say that ordinary fans would rather
watch a thrilling race without anticipating a protracted law suit.  We don’t watch because we doubt, but in spite
of it.  Few of us enjoy the downfall of a
cheating star.  We look for greatness; we
long for grace.

And yet, Olympic pressure to find even the slightest edge
against opponents makes cheating more attractive.  The rewards for winning could add up to
millions of dollars, as commentators constantly remind us.  All that sacrifice, and it comes down to
THIS, the make or break opportunity.  The
Gold and its attendant fame and fortune, or second place. Obscurity.  There’s a sad and cynical message for
children watching.  Competition is all or
nothing.  Glory has a price tag.  Once upon a time, back in the days of Chariots of Fire, the Olympics styled
themselves as a celebration of excellence in amateur sport.  I wonder how athletes define love of the game
in today’s economy.

My children still believe in honest competition.  Readers of D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, with its magical colored-pencil
illustrations, they imagine athletes as demi-gods, fleet of foot, strong of
arm, noble in spirit, laurel crowned for their heroic deeds.   For my kids, the Games mean higher, faster,
stronger.  For me, they also mean politics,
money, and doping.  I like their Olympics
better.

You may have heard of 826 Valencia.  This is a non-profit dedicated to helping
kids write.  The organization hosts
classes and volunteer tutors for kids at its own urban writing centers.  Dave Eggers started 826 Valencia in Berkeley,
and there are now writing centers in many other cities, including Boston.  As a fund raiser, 826 Valencia is planning to publish an
anthology in which writers describe how they work.  They asked me to contribute a short essay
about some aspect of the writing process. 
I’ve just sent in the following contribution.  It’s a fair description of my work habits,
and so I thought I’d share it here.

What is a successful writing day?  Now there’s a question.  I could say–Oh three thousand words.  That’s a good solid day’s work for me.  Or, I write a chapter a day, nine to five
with a lunch break at noon.  Somehow my
workday doesn’t look like that.  This is
partly because I have four children, and I write while they are at school,
Monday through Friday, with interruptions, staff days, snow days, and sick days
thrown in.  My work day is short, and my
work resists quotas.  My novels do not
pour forth easily and smoothly like cake batter–although I wish they would.

When I’m beginning a book, a successful day could mean
outlining the characters’ relationships on a large piece of paper.  In the middle of a novel, a successful day
means editing the previous day’s work, and then adding two or three new
pages.  There is a point in a book where
I begin to write more quickly, and then my big challenge is to slow down.  I am quite impatient, and I wish I could
write the whole book at once.  I begin
opening my laptop at all times and trying to push forward.  When I was younger I’d start churning out
pages, but I don’t let myself anymore, because whenever I rush, I end up
tossing and rewriting.  My desire to work
quickly and efficiently backfires, and I end up making more work for
myself.  Ironically, eagerness can cause
burn out and confusion.  What a delicate
balance between a successful day and a migraine.  I try to hold myself to three or four good pages
and quit while I’m ahead.

One trick I use to slow myself down is to start writing by
hand in the middle of a book.  I take an
extra fine Pilot pen and ink in a good fifty pages on unlined white paper.  When I was writing “The Other Side of the Island” I drafted eighty pages in purple.  The story was coming well, and I began
growing superstitious about a particular purple pen.  I began to carry pen and manuscript
everywhere in my bag.  This is strange
marsupial behavior on my part, as if I can keep my young book warm in my
pouch.  I grow protective, as my book
develops, afraid of losing my work.  I
also fantasize that even when I’m running errands or taking care of kids, I can
whip out my novel and continue, dashing off a few more lines, the way knitters
whip off another row of stitches.  The
sad truth is that writing novels is not much like knitting sweaters.  I have never been successful at capitalizing
on odd moments here and there.  I feel
strangely uninspired in the dentist’s office or the airport, or on park
benches, or at playgrounds.

Several hours of quiet writing at a desk.  That’s a fine day’s work.  Three or four pages, but, really, a single
good page will suffice.  An excellent
paragraph.  A new idea.  I’ll take what I can get.  Revery alone will do, if bees are few.