On my way to Provincetown, I stopped to replace my Blackberry, which I dropped in the dog’s water bowl and which fried (sorry, the rice didn’t work.) I got a newer Blackberry and I sat down by the beach and caught up on some e-mail. I got a number of distressed and disgruntled e-mails from readers of the blog who disapprove of my going on Facebook and Twitter. I was reminded that many people do not feel about the change the way I do. “You should simplify!” scolded one message.
  Another wrote to say she was glad I was happier, but she found it more useful and interesting when I was depressed. I wrote back that I would rather be happy and she be bored than that I be miserable for her amusement. I imagine it was more interesting, though.
 I have thought a lot about the modern writer, and the line between working in peace and connecting to the world using new tools. Walking around in Provincetown, past the homes of O’Neill, Dos Passos, Mailer, any writer thinks about the new world of communicating.
 I choose to use new tools. Writers have to work harder to find their audiences in much the same way everybody else does, and I am much enjoying the new dimensions both Facebook and Twitter give to my ideas and work, and my ability to connect to new and existing readers. I have about 1,000 new ones already.
 I intend to enthusiastically (and within reason) explore both of these new forms. They all have a place, and my job is to keep perspective, and not become slave to them. I was tweeting from the National Seashore, and even from a photo gallery. Twitter is especially interesting to me, because it is spontaneous writing in the moment. It’s a challenge, and I am drawn to it, although brevity has never been my game.
   New media are neither all good nor all bad. It depends, of course, on how you use them. I do not intend to be sitting around, gathering dust and clucking about the old days.
  To be honest, and as is obvious,  the blog is a monologue, not a dialogue, and the minute I start doing it for others, it will be lost.
  For me, change is growth, and opportunity. Sometimes, you have to turn it off. Other times it can really turn you on.