Atticus Lish

My editor, Jordan Pavlin, my agent Binky, Amanda Urban, or I would see and feel that something was missing there. I would have to try to fill it. You might think, well, there’s something that belongs in this gap. And you try to write it and it’s not very well done. So that’s a whole bunch of trial and error. I would describe it this way. I would feel like I was driving down a road and some sections of the road were simply gone. When I went down in them to fill them in, they became infinite tunnels. And I thought, “Christ, I’ll never get out of this.” There were some parts that got rewritten more than others. I mean, I’ll tell you this, I literally filled tubs, those sterilite tubs—they fill the room behind me—of paper, of takes that I did on this book. It’s seven years’ worth of wrong turns. I moved it all in myself, it was very tiring. It must damn near be 1,000 pounds. So, then, when you ask about actually getting everything to be as right as possible, to make it a smooth road for the reader, I think that just came from going back over it.