How’d you get on to the idea for The Perfect Storm?

I got hurt pretty badly [working for a tree-cutting company]. Tore part of my leg with a chain saw. I was laid up for a while, and I got to thinking about dangerous work. Maybe that could be my focus as a writer. I started getting interested in loggers, commercial fishing, fire fighting, foreign correspondents, oil well drilling. I picked out six jobs that didn’t involve guns, and that weren’t performance jobs. Race-car driver, for example—society would be fine without race-car drivers.

People who are exhilarated by risk—and I’m one of them, I admit—are almost invariably college-educated. They choose their risks: a Wall Street lawyer who goes rock climbing on the weekend. Those who have to take risks for a living tend not to have gone to college. They take risks in order to eat. The fishermen I wrote about—they dread the risk part of their jobs. It’s not an adventure.

About that time I had an interesting conversation with a friend about heroism. We decided that the definition of heroism is a brave act in the service of someone else. That pretty much defines the kinds of work that interest me.

While I was mulling this over and limping around Gloucester, the “perfect” storm hit. And I found out a fishing boat had gone down. Well, clearly, that was dangerous work. So I thought I’d write about the Andrea Gail. I thought it would just be a chapter in a larger book.

Did you have a contract for the book?

No. But that was par for the course. I remember saying to my agent, Stuart, “OK, I’ll write this, and then you can send it around.” And he was sort of appalled. He said, “You don’t do it like that; you don’t write it first.”