Having bought the colours, an easel, and a canvas, the next step was to begin. But what a step to take! The palette gleamed with beads of colour; fair and white rose the canvas; the empty brush hung poised, heavy with destiny, irresolute in the air. My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto.

It’s different for every project for me. Books are a combination of character, plot, and setting. And every book I write, I could point out and say, oh, there was the first idea . Usually they’re growing separately , a couple ideas for the plot, a couple seeds for characters. An idea for a magic system or a governmental structure. Those will be growing independently in my notes file. I know I have a book when these different elements start to meld together in my brain, and change each other in interesting ways. I’ll start to say, all right, these two ideas belong together. Here’s this character who belongs in this plot. Is there a setting that I’ve been developing that also enhances this?

Usually one of two ways. Either I see something in the world and I’m like, “I want to make that picture,” or I see a picture and I’m like, “I want to make that painting.” And then I look for a way to make it out of stuff in my world. So I guess the first process is more, like, self-explanatory; you make some sketches, take pictures. I usually make notes about color, particularly try to get one color relationship true in the sense that the distance in terms of value or temperature of those two colors is true. Not necessarily the colors themselves, but the way they relate to each other. Make notes about that. Then come back to the studio, and maybe 10% of the time I just start working on a painting. And then maybe 30% of the time I make drawings and start that way. And then the other…is from looking at a painting and seeing a question and a solution posed by someone else, and trying to pose the same question and find the same answer, or a similar answer. And my way into that is to find a subject in my surroundings that seems structurally suitable, I guess.

I like to get into a playful state of mind, in my home studio. To spend time tinkering and looking through stuff. I have a lot of objects in my life that inspire me, in general, like books, records, synthesizers, and cameras. I like to mess around with them and get into a headspace where I can say, “Okay, I’m going to make music for two hours, and then I’m going to write for two hours.” I’m excited to be in a place where that doesn’t have to be directed toward anything too specific, for the sake of doing it and seeing where I’m at right now.

It’s best to start writing when you wake up in the morning, or afternoon, or whenever it is you wake up. Just start then, because you are closer to the dream state than at any other time in the day, which means the imagination is really working on all cylinders, and it means that whatever it is that manufactures sentences in your head is very fresh, and you have all kinds of slants on things that by the end of the day you won’t have, or you will just lose along the way. Further advice I have not.

I wrote a little book called Screening History , in which I go in great detail into the movies that affected me growing up. This was in the years of puberty, and so on. The Prince and the Pauper , based on Mark Twain’s novel with the Mauch twins in it. All of the propaganda films I loved, because they were political.