It can be combining something disparate. With Greenberg , for example, I had the idea with the character and I wanted to make a movie in L.A. and about L.A. Then I put the two things together and that was the movie. With Francis Ha I wanted to do things in black and white, in New York, and with Greta Gerwig. These are the more conscious things.

It’s funny. Before, it used to be that I’d travel somewhere. I always had a storyline, some kind of grounding element. I used to go somewhere and just take over a space and go find things and find elements. That was how I used to do it. But since I had Cyrus I’ve had to do things only in the studio and shift it, so it’s very different for me now. I’m constantly writing in my book and coming up with things, mostly from things I read. I have all these ideas and I just write them and then some make it out. Most of them don’t. I was reading [Jorge Luis] Borges’ Labyrinths about six months ago. That really spoke to me, and that’s when I started doing the [painting series titled] Endless Sunsets. It’s like a labyrinth, something you can never get out of and there’s really no point in it, a brain maze kind of thing.

With a lot of fear and trepidation. It’s totally improvisational because I work with collage, and cut up found warehouse paintings. I’ll sometimes stick a fragment or two on, and just try to figure out where to go from there. I’ve begun to think that I make each piece so differently from the other, and I don’t think that’s the way the art world likes things at this point. I think they like increments of change. While you would know it’s my work, I think I just always liked the challenge of how I’m going to compose. I get myself into a lot of trouble and hot water, and I just have to work on it, and work on it. I think that’s why some of my paintings are so awkward and odd, because I’ve had to deal with mistakes that I’ve made, and tried to correct them in some way.

Good question. The novel began with Sten and his story, which then suggested the rest. I always follow that first line and always write organically, in sequence. This allows me to make the discoveries I need to as I progress. I don’t really concern myself with questions of which character takes precedence—again, that lies outside my purview. I see this as a kind of ensemble piece, I suppose, like the novel that precedes it, San Miguel , told from the perspective of three women.