Last year, we challenged you writers to try your hand at something new and different. Here’s a note we received from Joseph A. Keane, Ph.D in response. Though this dates back several months, we think the perspective is timeless and well worth sharing:

With regard to your “Author Enablers” column in the January 2011 issue of Book Page, your next project, of apparently writing a textbook on “quantum physics” cracked me up. And then it made me really think. Your point about writing “about something new and different” is well taken.

I am not an author, per se. I am a retired nuclear physicist, with my doctorate from Ohio State (GO BUCKS!!). Over the years I published stuff on nuclear physics, higher education, college teaching, etc. But, my greatest pleasure in writing, over the years, has been when I could sit down and write something for publication, or not, which had no connection at all to what I did for a living. (By the way, the old joke about quantum physics is that only three people in the world really understand understood it: Schroedinger, Heisenberg, and every other physicist who thinks he/she is that third person.)

Anyway, over the years I have published: a mystery story in Woman’s World magazine, a romance confession story in a romance magazine, an off-beat essay (well, the editor wrote saying that his staff laughed for days) about the irrationality of “job search committees” in the American Association for Higher Education magazine. And, along the way have been numerous unpublished short stories, none of which ever had anything to do with physics.

So, I am impressed that your writers’ challenge is intended for real writers with a challenge of writing “something different.” And, from my own experiences of writing physics stuff and then the aforementioned stuff, I submit that you have a great idea here. I repeat that my greatest joy in writing has been to tackle something that I knew little about.

Dr. Keane is a living example of an Ohio State football fan who can write. Also, his story reminds us that we don’t need to limit our writing to only one subject or genre. Have at it!