Heidi Julavits

During the summers, when I'm in Maine, I work at a desk that's located beyond all tendrilly wi-fi reaches. It takes me a few days to break the constant e-mail-checking habit, then I find I don't want to check my e-mail ever, and often don't for days.

A logic proof is: you get a starting point and an ending point, and you have to get there through all these different steps and tautologies. I approach novel writing that way. When I get to the end I have to go back and connect everything.

You probably have to have redundant levee systems with canals in between them, like the Dutch have, to make sure that incoming water is channeled off to areas where you deal with it rather than have it drown you.