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.

With my work you actually know at the beginning what it’s going to be. I plan everything out before I actually start making the piece. There’s always a chance, and it’s happened many times, that it doesn’t work out. I take the canvas off and throw it away. But usually, because it’s sort of done before it’s started, I don’t even have to make that decision. When something doesn’t work, when I’ve had to abandon something, it’s usually been because there was ultimately just no humor in it—or no “A-ha” moment—because there’s something missing. I have a friend whose paintings are never done, he might pick something up years later and add something to it. I’m not that kind of painter, for better or worse. I look at work I did five years ago, and I can’t imagine going back to it. I’m not the same person I was then. I’m not the same person I was even five months ago. When the moment is over, it’s over. I’d rather not spend time rethinking something. Instead, get up. Go outside. Go for a walk. Then make something new.

Usually I’m overcome with sadness and fear, actually. And when I have that feeling where the bottom drops out of things, I know that it’s done.

They feel very, very different to finish. With a song, I end up playing it so, so, so much and shifting things while I’m writing so, so much. And then I play it and play it and play it, and through that process, I write it. Over and over and over—almost like when they’re polishing a stone and it’s just being thrown around inside that tumbler. The song rolls over, and it starts out as this very malleable thing. It’s the strangest experience where you start with absolutely arbitrary things—or so you think—and you’re making them up, apparently, but as you go, and through the process of repetition, things become so apparent to you.