Tick

You know, the older I get, the less and less I ever want to gossip. Having been quite hurt by a pretty well-known writer I'd never met spreading a falsehood about me (that was not inherently something mean--but was very false and personally hurtful to me), I know how it feels. Heck, there's not one person who, over the years, hasn't been gossiped about from grade school on. It's why I avoid my neighbors. That whole "Desperate Housewives" thing is not for me.

I can share that the feeling of people discussing you is the reason that I wish I knew then what I know now. I would most definitely have always taken a pen name. If only to gain some distance between me and my work, in a sense. Is it gossip to be reviewed? Of course not. You want as many of those as possible. But in this era of bloggers and snark, not every review remains impersonal. But you just take it in stride. Or, if you are like me, you NEVER, EVER Google yourself. And I stopped reading reviews at Amazon. In fact, I stopped reading reviews anywhere. My editors and agent call me with them sometimes (PW or Kirkus). I usually just say "good or bad?" Thank goodness they've been mostly the former.

But the real reason I bring up gossip is the whole situation in Albany, New York. If you haven't been following New York politics, New York's governor, Eliot Spitzer has apparently been a frequent customer of call girls. Expensive call girls ($4300 for two hours). Unsafe sex. Did I mention he's married and has three children? Did I mention he ALSO ran on a platform of reform, that he routinely (as attorney general) prosecuted white-collar crime and prostitution? On top of it, he's always struck people as holier than thou, rabidly vicious in his prosecutions. In short, a pr*ck. So all of New York is watching this drama, and there are calls for his impeachment.

Bear with me . . . I'm getting to the writing. Like Senator Larry Craig, like former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevy, Spitzer issued an apology with his wife by his side. No slacker herself, she's Harvard-educated and attractive, and apparently VERY bright.

FINALLY, Orloff arrives at the writing. See, part of me hates watching this spectacle. I don't watch TV news ever (unless it's the BBC) precisely because I don't want to hear the talking heads and pundits rip this situation apart. I don't want to watch people, like vultures, pick over this life. Not because I, former New Yorker, like Spitzer. I don't. It's the human pain. BUT . . . I have to say as a writer, as this whole situation goes down, I am thinking, thinking, thinking. WHAT MAKES ALL THESE PLAYERS IN THIS DRAMA TICK? How did he think he'd never get caught? (Money laundering got him caught--no, he doesn't appear to have laundered money but the way he moved a lot of money through different accounts appeared suspicious to the banks, who alerted the IRS, who alerted the feds.) The guy is BRILLIANT by all accounts. He prosecuted white collar crime--he knows how people get caught! Okay . . . then what makes a guy have a call girl come to him the night before Valentine's Day and have unsafe sex? Creepy. What makes his wife stand by him? Because I can tell you . . . I "might" for my children stay with someone--I don't ever try to judge a woman's (or man's) decision in that regard--but I ain't gonna stand in front of the press for a photo op while he cops to this behavior. So why? Does she like being Mrs. Governor that much? (He was rumored to have wanted to be the first Jewish president of the U.S.--maybe they both had aspirations for the White House.) And then . . . the writer in me thinks of the nuclear fallout in both their lives. It's BAD ENOUGH your son-in-law is a cheating bastard. But hookers? If he and his wife stay together, what will the holidays be like? What of his daughters having to go to school?

In short . . . it's not GOSSIP I want at all. That makes me feel queasy. I don't want to delight in someone's pain. But it's really wishing I could delve into the psyches of the players. Some cases, like the Scott Peterson murder trial, rivet me that way. Because as I delve, I think, "There's a future book here. There's something in this near-Greek tragedy that's usuable as writer." It's not the salacious details I want--I really DON'T want to know exactly what $4300 for two hours buys you. It's what makes all these people in this situation TICK.

So tell me . . . do certain news stories or human dramas fascinate you as a writer? Do you think of characters as you are watching them unfold? Do you like gossip? (You can 'fess up here--hey. some people like their People magazine.) Do you want to know, as a writer, what makes people TICK?