I have to tell you that I have never let anything [long] go, ever. Not these four books. I’ve let go of lots of short stories. I haven’t become a seasoned enough short story writer to practice it. I’ve let many of those go, and almost don’t do it anymore. But in terms of longer work, for whatever reason, I’m properly calibrated to that length.

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

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.

It’s paying attention to the energy of the piece. If it feels really distant from me, I know that there’s an irreconcilable problem between me and the work, and I need to just put it to the side until it wants to come back to me. If I wake up really excited to work on something, then it’s still present in me. If not, I put it to the side without fearing, because often those things come back much, much better a decade or two decades later. It’s really allowing the work not to just be the work at hand, but the longer process of making something, making a life and making a life in art. So, knowing that even if this story, I tried to do this story when I was 19 and it didn’t work and I kept trying 26 and then 34 and then 42.