How does a new work begin for you?

Sometimes a title might occur to me. And a title will just stick out in my mind. And then I will think in terms, everything I think of I will think in terms of that title. For instance, I did a painting called Four New Clear Women . It meant, if women became powerful, and they are, like women who own large stock in the stock market, or become president like Golda Meir or Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi, will they be “New Clear Women” or “Nuclear Women?” Will they blow us up, or are they smart? Something like that. So, then I met — there was this actress named Liv Ullmann, and she started painting. And she said, “Oh, what are you going to do next?” And I said, “I’m going to do The Persistence of Electrical Nymphs in Space .” And she said, “Oh, what’s that about?” and I said, “Well, that’s the sound of all the souls after the earth blows up.” And she says, “Oh, yeah.” That was very… she probably talked with Ingmar Bergman about that. But that was great. So those are titles that I would think about, before I would start working.

Then I think to myself, Well, start. Start. Start.

Choosing parts is based on a series of instincts and hunches

No doubt. I’ve written at times about the spooky element in writing. You go in each morning, and there’s a blank page. Maybe it takes five minutes, maybe it takes an hour. Sooner or later you start writing, and then the words begin to flow. Where does that come from? You can’t pinpoint it. You always wonder, “Will it all stop tomorrow?” In that sense it’s spooky. In other words, you’re relying on a phenomenon that’s not necessarily dependable. That’s a particular kind of fear but there are other fears in writing of an altogether different sort.

That's it. Mostly. Really, the people and the issues all come together in a sort of clump or knot, and writing the story is untying, unwinding the knot.

I remember being present when a Jesuit priest in Rome asked Tennessee Williams, “How do you write a play?” and Tennessee said, “Well, I start with a sentence.” Well, I start with a sentence, and that’s how you write a book.

When I start out to make a panoramic piece, I often work from left to right. But when a small scrap of a drawing turns into a giant drawing the progress is less linear, a more intuitive process. “Untitled (Color Kitchen)” started with the flowers. Mariah Corrigan cut me these beautiful old roses, which I put in a yellow pitcher. The next day I was all packed up and walking out the door to go to my studio when I saw the roses and thought, “Those flowers are going to be gone by tomorrow.” So I stayed home and painted them just to always remember them. Eventually the drawing grew to include the table, the wall, the curtain, and the next wall

Foolhardiness. I wrote two chapters and a synopsis, sent it off to a publisher, and it sold. That's what emboldened me to continue.

Just circumstance. I was running a small theatre group and somebody didn’t deliver a play.

It can be combining something disparate. With Greenberg , for example, I had the idea with the character and I wanted to make a movie in L.A. and about L.A. Then I put the two things together and that was the movie. With Francis Ha I wanted to do things in black and white, in New York, and with Greta Gerwig. These are the more conscious things.

No, I would never say that. I would never say that I do something just in order to put a fresh spin on it or do something different with it. I am drawn to certain plays because I think there’s something about them in the story that I want to tell, or that I think is relevant—something that strikes me. With Macbeth, I’m not doing this because I want to do a crazy interpretation or production.

The way I often find what I’m going to write next is by writing.

It begins with knowing the story you want to tell. There are thousands of stories contained within the world that Samantha has created – we have to be very disciplined about opening up the world in a way that will lead us on to further investigation in the rest of the series. We need to find the emotional heart of the story; the relationships; the tension; the suspense and the drive; and of course working closely with Samantha is going to make it much easier.

It’s completely spatial. I follow Graham on that a lot. I really think that painting is about space and proportions and where things go; it’s what painting is. Form, if it isn’t the right color, it is not in the right place. And you know you can actually change the relationships a lot by changing the color a little. Yesterday, something happened in my studio. I realized that new things come to you all the time when you work in art. I had forgotten that if Graham wanted to make something slightly off-white, he used violet instead of greying it, and it’s really good. So, last night I remembered that, and the painting worked out.

I usually start with a structure. The structure is quite rigid. So I have a strong form or frame. A work like Einstein on the Beach is like that: Act One, Two, Three, Four. Act One is A and B. Act Two is C and A. Act Three is B and C. And Act Four is all three together, A, B, and C. So, I knew it was going to be based on theme and variation, and once I get that, I can be freer to fill in the form. Without it, I don’t know how to fill it in – it’s like an architect builds an apartment building: you can live in the building, I can live in the building, other people can live in the building. They each have their apartment to their own liking, but the building has a cohesion because the architect has built it.

Good question. The novel began with Sten and his story, which then suggested the rest. I always follow that first line and always write organically, in sequence. This allows me to make the discoveries I need to as I progress. I don’t really concern myself with questions of which character takes precedence—again, that lies outside my purview. I see this as a kind of ensemble piece, I suppose, like the novel that precedes it, San Miguel , told from the perspective of three women.

It’s different every time. The physical or mental acts of composing are always kind of the same. It really involves, for me, turning off the more critical faculties of the brain and reaching a state where things just flow. It takes many days to get into that because normally you’re in this critical mode, this analytical mode where you’re structuring things and putting things in order. To create the material, to create the building blocks, you have to go into another state, which is much more receptive and much more intuitive.

I started with the earliest tools: mashers and cutters, knives and knots. I would cast them in paint, and embed them right in the surface. I was using plastilene clay to make the molds. One day my friend Art Schade said, “Why don’t you just make the paintings on the clay ?” It was one of those moments where you hit yourself in the forehead. So I built a big clay table, eight by ten feet. And I could engrave the surface in all kinds of ways.

I wrote it because it was so. Because it was the force of my experience that pushed the book out of me, like a baby is pushed out of its mother. The mother doesn’t say, “I’ll push this one out for my friends.” You push the book out because you’ve got to – as you push out the baby.

I think it begins as a kind of tension in space.  There’s something out there and it’s waiting for the big bang, and I have to get that into my head.  I have a composer friend in Ireland, and he beautifully said, “I have this scream in my head and I have to get it into the orchestra.  I have to get it into the music.”  But I wouldn’t be quite as dramatic as that.  But I have this tension.  I have this thing that has to be done. And the problem is, you see, once you’ve got the first paragraph down and you’ve got the tone, then the bloody book is written.  All you have to do is fill it in then, which makes it really boring.  I mean I’d like to be like one of those Japanese artists, you know, just go shoop ! and it’s done.  But no, it takes years.