The starting process has changed over time. I go back and forth from knowing exactly where I want to place the central figure and doing that first and committing to her and then building the world around her. But more recently, between the body of work I did last year and what I’m working on now, I’ve started to commit to building up the background layers slowly. Putting a wash down and building up a lot of different transparent layers that have their own energies, and then starting to rip that energy apart to then create a new form or a new structure. That language, in general, is also what this is about. Ripping and expanding, shedding and rebuilding, that push and pull of building the surface so that she has this foundation and that it feels like a more consonant structure. I’m liking that relationship to the work.

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?

When I’m writing a book, I start gathering material for years before I start writing it. I will find newspaper clippings, overheard dialogue, images that come to my head, sort of vague scenes from a plot, and I just make a huge, messy list of those things. I’m doing that for the next book, and I’ve been doing it for a long time, and I’m still not even close to being ready to start. Maybe in the fall I’ll start it, but I’m not on the cusp of starting it really. I’m just gathering that raw material. And what deserves to go in that document? It’s hard to say, but I know that things come together. I know that this article about Chinese surveillance definitely belongs in the same place with my son telling me about this dream he had. These are somehow connected. I have no idea how, but it’s just a feeling that I have, like an instinct. The Need and The Beautiful Bureaucrat very much began that way.

If so, stop that. Stop thinking, and act.