Well, I feel it. If I don’t feel it just the way I want it, then I’d rather destroy it than to keep it.

Sometimes when I listen to it, I’m still editing it in my head a little bit. At a point, you need to realize that you have to stop and be outside of yourself. You want to take it seriously, but you also know in your heart that you’re making it worse by over-editing or over-processing or over-adding.

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.

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?”