I think it’s similar to writing a poem, in a way. It’s almost like, when there’s nothing left to remove from the formula, it’s done. Or honestly just when I get tired of working on it, that’s real.

I don’t dwell on things. When it rings and it feels good, I move on. I have so much to do, I have so many marks to hit, so many deadlines in front of me… People don’t realize the layers that are involved in one costume alone — and I do hundreds in one film. So I have to move in a space that’s in flow. When things feel like they are right and they are in the flow of the story and I can present them to the director and get feedback, I am really ready to move on. I could return to it and change it and change it again and go down that slippery slope, but it wouldn’t be prudent of me to keep changing things.

I don’t think any of my plays are done right now.

I keep messing with it until it gets to the mix table. Sometimes you can’t just change the whole song, but maybe I can change a verse in the very last moment or a chord or the introduction to the song, or the song’s order, some fade-ins or fadeouts. It’s a tough process letting go, saying, “This is it. It’s going to be this way. There were multiple choices, but we’ve chosen this one.” But it’s also a relief because it means you stop wondering. You stop thinking about it and you just let the songs find their own way and say goodbye to them and hello at some point because you’re going to start playing them live and it’s a way to actually get to know your song once you finished it. I usually know. It feels like a release to let go of a song.

No, I’m never worried that I’m going to forget anything from a previous draft. It’s not that I don’t forget good things, but I think that often we fetishize what has been done to the detriment of the larger design. I think sometimes we fall in love with a paragraph, even a chapter or a character, and ultimately, those things don’t necessarily add to the book at hand. I actually see it as this beautiful process of almost whittling away. I know it seems counterintuitive, but if I do remember something and it does come into the book in the next draft and I never look at my previous draft, then it probably deserves to be there.