While I was editing, sometimes I would have these free associations, so maybe I would not have had that shot of the naked people if I had not found the files. I allowed myself that things would happen in the film, even though I had organized my trip in the boat and to rebuild the courtyard, and all this.

We tried make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there.

I worked as an editor until I joined the New Yorker , and so I’m an extremely tough self-editor. I also love being edited. I love a hard edit. It’s a privilege to be edited hard.

First, I do two longhand drafts, and those are complete drafts. Every word is gone over and considered. The third draft is when I start typing, but it’s the same process again. The whole thing is reread. I think after three or four, I start to be able to be satisfied with certain sections. And then I start concentrating on things that just are more problematic, that are going to be a tough nut to crack, probably for the duration of the process. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t come back to things and have an “aha” moment, or say, “Oh, wait a minute, this sucks. I thought it was okay, but I found a better way to do it.”

Don’t write in public places. In the early 1990s I went to live in Paris. The usual writerly reasons: back then, if you were caught writing in a pub in England, you could get your head kicked in, whereas in Paris, dans les cafés . . . Since then I’ve developed an aversion to writing in public. I now think it should be done only in private, like any other lavatorial activity.

Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it’s a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It’s only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I’m bunking off from something.