I’m the worst about this. I often don’t know. I’ll have 14 small victories while I’m working on something. I’m like, “It’s done,” and I show it to somebody and they’re like, “Is it?” They ask me a couple questions, or I’ll realize myself like, “I think it’s done,” and then a few days later I’ll realize that, “Oh no, I’m still having ideas about it.”

Sometimes some of the things I’ve been working on for years and years, they’re just not getting any better or not going anywhere, so they fade away. And sometimes you start something, and within a few days, it develops enough that it feels complete. Each piece is different and develops itself in a different way. Some artists make the same thing for 50 years, and that doesn’t interest me. My current show at Lisson Gallery will be my 18 th with this gallery, I’ve been working with them since 1974, and all the shows have been different. You don’t repeat a show. So this solo show is comprised of pieces I’ve made in the last three years.

I think that’s the part of writing that I think is the most intuitive and unpredictable. What happens to me is that I—unlike other writers that I’ve known, particularly mystery writers— I don’t have an ending in mind. And it might happen when I get to a certain point that I think, “Oh, I know how this is going to end probably.” And then I write a little more, and I think, “Well, that won’t work.” So, what always happens is that as I approach the ending, I can sense myself coming to an ending. And then because I’ve been working for such a long time on the book, and it’s all in my head, and many things have happened supposedly, the thing just starts to draw tight. The threads start to come together. “Well, I’ve left this loose, and that loose, and that loose. So how can these be pulled together? And what can I say that would make a satisfying close?”

I don’t know the answer to that, especially with projects like Seat Assignment or Sorted Books, because both do still feel ongoing. The Sorted Books Project is my longest ongoing project to date, where I’m working in libraries or book collections with other people’s books and trying to work only with what’s there, to draw something out from the book arrangements I make.