I’m back!

Archive of My First Blog – 13

I’m back!
July 25, 2009

After a lot of work, some play and a bit of traveling, I’m back at the blog. Turns out that even a blog with a topic as wide open as “nothing in particular” and a posting schedule of “whenever the spirit moves me” doesn’t necessarily make a blogger’s life any easier. Committing to posting daily requires developing a posting habit — but I don’t really want one. Committing to a particular topic — or range of topics — focuses the mind but I don’t really want to limit my subject matter. After so many years of having my life dictated by my kids’ schedules, I have a near-phobic aversion to committing to any kind of schedule at all. And to me choosing a range of subjects means being required to have an opinion on those subjects and expressing it. But in the last couple of years I’ve tried to have fewer opinions and to hold those I do have a little less fiercely. I don’t want to do outrage. I don’t even want to do amused, as in Elvis Costello’s immortal lyric: “I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.” What I’m aiming for, I guess, is greater detachment, which I believe has and will help me become a better novelist. One of the reasons I loved being a reporter was because I could be in the thick of what was happening but not actually be part of it. To some that may sound like shirking responsibility, but to me that detachment is essential to sorting through a complex situation to find the essential truth. And the ability to find that truth — in news or in novels — is the key to good journalism and good fiction. Next week I’m plunging back into my Oneida novel, where the truth I’ve found to date actually came as a bit of a surprise and will make a better story, one I couldn’t have written if I was still doing outrage.