[I wrote this quite awhile ago.  It made the rounds on other blogs, but I thought it would be a good intro to a series of posts on writing, a sequence that will end with Tom Pope and my Socratic to-and-fro about writing the thriller that’s in prep—see yesterday’s interview with Professor Tom.  On Tuesday, I’ll follow this with a new post, “Writing Secrets,” which might repeat some of the same material: give advice often enough and some might sink in.  Or not, especially if you disagree!  If you disagree, let me know.  That’s what blog comments are for.]

The media has become fixated on spontaneous symmetry breaking and the Higgs boson (the so-called “God particle,” a name that would surely make Mr. Higgs cringe).  The Higgs mechanism (i.e. the spontaneous symmetry breaking) is necessary to give mass to some of the vector bosons in the electroweak or weak and electromagnetic interaction theory.  Forgotten in all this media hoopla is the theory that led to the idea of quarks and gluons, the Eightfold Way of symmetries popularized by Mr. Gell-Mann.  (Note that I refrain from using the term “discovered.”  In theoretical physics, the math is “out there.”  You just have to figure out what math matches up to the experimental data.  Experimental physics is where “discoveries” are made.)

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[Tom Pope is a fellow reviewer for Book Pleasures.  He also has an alter ego as a writing teacher. He works with private clients and tutoring services and conducts fiction workshops for nonprofits such as the Langston Hughes Cultural Center. I thought it would be interesting to interview him about his work with aspiring writers.  It’s a changing world in writing, and he’s seen it all.]

Steve: Describe your background, Tom, and what you’re doing now.  In particular, why are you doing it, and do you find it rewarding?

Tom: I have a background in Political Science, which led to journalism that covered business trends in healthcare and the nonprofit world.  My skills in writing transitioned to tutoring students in writing about history and literature.  Those elements positioned me for seeing characters in a complex world structure of factions and forces. For example, when physicians wanted to create physician-hospital organizations, I immediately saw that one faction of doctors was forming to counter another faction of administrators. Viewing those elements allowed me to teach writing to authors about how their WIPs could be enhanced with background for the characters and pacing for the conflicts. Factions always design ideologies that try to determine whose social norms or forces strike a person.

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