Well, that all comes from your network. And so even today with, well over 300 million people on LinkedIn, most people have yet to learn how to use their network, in order to ally with their network, in order to find the right economic opportunities. And that’s one of the things that I’m still working on.

People refer to the ‘LMB culture’ as the thing, one of the things, that makes it special. It’s an attention to people who are willing to tackle very big problems. I mean problems that are so big that you couldn’t just solve it in a grant. The kind of problem that you could devote your life to. I was very fortunate in having mentors of Fred Sanger and César Milstein who exercised a kind of very benign mentorship but encouraged us to think big.

I surround myself with brilliant people who are wise and whose advice I can lean on at every possible moment. The Genome Project is a wonderful team effort. It’s not my project, this is a project that involves close to 1,000 scientists at institutions all over the world. The United States is taking a larger role than any other country, but many other countries are participating. In the U.S. we have a large number of genome centers. We have experts in almost every area. I have advisors who are willing to give up their time and energy to making sure we get there responsibly. It is a heavy load of responsibility, but I can share that load with people who are every bit as committed to the future of this endeavor as I am.

Still, I do have people I turn to before that point… I’ll send my ideas or images to a friends group chat or I ask my boyfriend, you know? Also, my dad has always been such an important figure in my life, and still is. He’s probably the most knowledgeable person I know.

I have two kids, so once we get them off to school, I tool around on email and Facebook longer than I should. Then I shut those things down and get to work.

Some books I return to again and again: Alice Munro's books, but especially "Lives of Girls and Women," Toni Morrison's "Beloved," Mary Oliver's poetry collections, Raymond Carver's short stories, Joan Didion's essays. There are so many more! It's hard to name them all. Books are my cure.

Okay, let me tell you guys. I didn’t know this until last week. There’s a thing called a boot box for your long boots. You put your long boots in them instead of them draping all over the floor of your closet, and then you put a bump on the shelf.

I think revising is the same as writing, at least when it comes to the essential truths I wrote about in “Write Like a Motherfucker.” It’s all work. It’s all part of the process. Writing and revision are not two entirely different things, even though they demand slightly different things of us.

The main part of being a writer, though, is being profoundly alone for hours on end, uninterrupted by email or friends or children or romantic partners and really sinking into the work and writing.

At Sunday school I was given this little book of lyric poems. It wasn’t even a book; more like a booklet. I remember reading the poems inside and not even knowing what this feeling was that I had; it was almost like ecstasy. I felt so pierced by those words.