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5.
AOTW: Was it hard for you to write your book during this period as you were dealing with your own emotions about 9/11?
Earl Merkel: I want to say "no," but in all honesty I simply don't know. I know that I continued writing --- I finished another novel, ghostwrote a nonfiction book, and soldiered on ... like most people did. Did whatever I must have been feeling find a way into the writing? I'd guess the answer is "of course." How could it be otherwise? But I'm damned if I can point to a single passage I wrote during the months after 9/11 that illustrate it --- at least in my book-length stuff.
It's probably not politically correct to say this, but my emotions regarding 9/11 were primarily centered on outrage. I was seriously pissed off for a very long period.
That may have been its own pathology; that's even likely, because I was just as prone to outrage at what I probably mis-saw as self-flagellation as I was at the damned terrorists themselves.
An example; one publishing newsletter I receive on-line had a brief story quoting an editor as looking at the piles of manuscripts and musing whether, in light of 9/11, anyone in his office saw these works as being relevant any longer.
Perhaps unwisely, I shot back an e-mail (subsequently published, at least in part) that suggested such navel-gazing was an affront to the people who, in the aftermath of the attacks, carried on with their lives and their jobs.
I blush to admit it now, but I'm pretty sure that I even used the cliché "or else the terrorists win."
In my defense, I think my outrage was genuine, if somewhat misdirected.
William Carman: It was hard to focus on anything during that period of time. Even though I was 2000 miles away we all seem to be closer because of the media. I realized what I was seeing was really removed from what was going on closer to the actual tragedies but my emotions were still very real.
Lori Woolridge: It was hard for me to resume writing again after 9/11 because we'd lost so many friends from Cantor Fitzgerald. I had this underlying layer of depression coloring my everyday life. Also, I had a hard time coming to grips with what, if any, importance my writing held in the aftermath of such a huge life-altering event. After a few months of nothing but Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, anthrax, and crooked accountants, I came to realize that creating an escape route for people to get away from the harsh reality of the world condition was very important.
Once I worked all of this out in my head the new story came fast and easy. I swear I felt like it was being channeled to me and I was simply jotting it down.
Bruce Feiler: I think it was easier. My passion to explore the life of Abraham and my determination to unlock any clues to what the religions had in common and where they diverged was being fed by the news. Even more, I was angry at the idea that violent men cloaking their political objectives with religious language could hijack the world. My turning back to the text was my own small way of saying somebody else cannot get away with claiming sole authority to speak for God. Each of us can make our own interpretation of the past --- and we must --- to help heal the breach in the world.
Jennifer Blake: It was almost impossible to concentrate. The story was just too close to the bone. Watching details unfold in the media that I'd spent so much time writing about during the previous months was surreal. Revision of the first half that dealt so intimately with attitudes and conditions under the Taliban was particularly difficult. But toward the end of the book, as my Benedict clan gathered forces to protect those they loved from an act of terrorism, the writing became a creative catharsis. I hardly notice it at the time but saw later, while reading the final draft, that I'd attempted to make some universal sense of the situation for myself as well as readers. Wade then, is a very different book because of 9/11.
Philip Jolowicz: In deference to those who lost loved ones and were very directly affected by 9/11 I do not want to overstate its impact upon me. I lost no relatives or friends in the tragedy and I was in the UK when it happened. Therefore I do not think my own emotional experience warrants any substantive analysis and would say, simply, that I was deeply affected by those events and remain so. Did it affect the process of writing? I don't know --- I had a deadline to meet on rewriting what I'd already written and I just sat down, closed the door, unhooked the phone and got on with it.
Jim Fusilli: My fiction writing is more visceral than intellectual, so I'm always working with complex emotions and my own inner turmoil. The hard part was going down to TriBeCa, Chinatown, SoHo and Little Italy several times a week and seeing how people were struggling to regain their footing. That was very difficult. Heartbreaking, really.
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