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Part of the reason I wanted to write a novel was that in fiction I could do something that's difficult to do in real life, which is to dwell on the stark details of the experience without really needing to create that narrative of redemption.

And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.

I just sort of write the book I feel like writing given the emotional place I am in my life at the time.

It may sound very strange, but I love the freedom that writing a novel gives me. It is an unhindered experience. If I come after a bad day, I can decide that my protagonist will die on page 100 of my novel in a 350-page story.

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.

A novel is a big thing. It's difficult to hold the whole story in your mind, especially when you've finished a first draft and are still giddy from the flow of creative juices.

Novels aren't pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline. A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it's a good starting place for me.

I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate the world of the subject.

A novel takes place over time. It's a historical narrative, and it needs to have a series of peaks and valleys and the move through. You can't just start at the highest pitch and stay there, but you can in a lyric poem.