Margaret Atwood on tweeting and touring new book

By Mathew Cowan

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - On the verge of her 70th birthday, Booker prize-winning Canadian author Margaret Atwood is forging into new territory to promote her latest novel "The Year of the Flood."

She is blogging, tweeting, peddling ringtones through the website yearoftheflood.com and will run a YouTube competition.

Reuters TV Technology Correspondent Matt Cowan spoke to Atwood on a rooftop just off London's Piccadilly Circus.

Q: HOW DID YOU GET HERE?

A: I'm zero-footprinting the entire thing. Zero footprint is a carbon offset and carbon-reduction design company, so they will not only tell you how much you're using but tell you how to use less and offset what you do use.

Q: DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'RE MAKING A DIFFERENCE WITH THIS GREEN BOOK TOUR?

A: First of all, the problem is huge so me individually making a difference? Doubtful. Getting some ideas out? Yes. Raising a bit of money and quite a lot of awareness for our RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), Birdlife International, the mess we're in - quite a bit.

Q: THAT SOUNDS LIKE A WARNING ABOUT OUR BLIND BELIEF IN TECHNOLOGY AND PROGRESS.

A: Technology is a morally neutral thing. It's a tool. It does to some extent form us. It affects how we behave. For instance, if we didn't have computers, you and I wouldn't have met through Twitter. Someone asked me today, well isn't Twitter this stupid thing that's dumbing down everything? I said, no you're confusing it with writing. It's not writing, it's signaling. Put it in the same category as the telegraph, the semaphore flags, the smoke signals.

Q: IT HAS CAUGHT A LOT OF PEOPLE'S ATTENTION THAT YOU ARE ON TWITTER.

A: I know, they find it disjunctive, but why do they? I talk on the phone. Why would I not give it a try?

Q: THE IDEA OF A BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR, POET AND ESSAYIST REDUCED TO 140 CHARACTERS IS SURPRISING TO SOME.

A: It's seeing how small you can get it. Like any other art spectrum - you know, pictures go from miniatures to huge murals. So, it's the same with writing. It can be small, it can be big. Twitter isn't writing, it's signaling. It could be writing. In fact, I thought of doing something like John Cage's symphony that will be played over 100 years. You could put a word a day on to the 'twit', or 'tweet'?

Q: SO HOW HAS THE TOUR ITSELF BEEN GOING? IN EVERY CITY, YOU PICK UP YOUR ACTORS LOCALLY.

A: It goes like this, I arrive, I walk into the rehearsal and I think 'oh no, it's never going to work' and then it comes together.