The topics she winds up writing about are “a combination of luck and instinct,” Orlean said.
And in general, she said she tends to gravitate towards topics of which she has no knowledge.
“Usually I’m done with one piece, and I start from zero,” she said. “I just hope I’ll fall into something.”
The current article she is working on, Orlean said, sprang from a conversation she had with an eleven-year-old girl about a particular hobby of hers. Orlean did not elaborate on the nature of the hobby.
Orlean said that the media blitz following Adaptation’s release generated more recognition for her.
“It’s more rare for me now to meet people in the course of my reporting who aren’t familiar with my name,” she said. “You feel more observed when you’ve gotten this kind of attention.”
As “disconcerting” as the increased recognition is, Orlean pointed to heightened expectations about her next book as a concern.
“Probably the only really persistent issue is slight anxiety about my next book,” she said. “But that probably would been the case anyway.”
—Staff writer Margaret W. Ho can be reached at mwho@fas.harvard.edu.