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.

I take a break. I need some distance, and then I start getting edits. Generally they’re pretty macro at the beginning. I work with an editor here in Canada and another at FSG. They’re truly brilliant, and they pose the initial questions, again, on a macro scale. They pose, I mull, and then basically re-enter the work and try to… I keep talking about aliveness, but I realize that’s the central point with this book. It’s like I try to preserve the aliveness while engaging with their queries about what can be built out, what might not be as clear to the reader as it is in my head. All of that very subtle, hyper-intelligent work that editors do, the way they inhabit the work and illuminate it for you—it sounds like an act of mercy which on many levels it is.

Monday to Friday, very, very industriously from ten in the morning ’til about six in the evening, I just sat and wrote, and revised and revised, and wrote.

I don’t know if this says something about my attachment style, but whenever I start writing a book, I love it and think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. Then, as time passes, I hate it more and more. It makes promoting a book difficult because by that point, I really hate it. I tend to find more and more flaws as time goes on. I never feel like it’s done or ready.