I Started Out In Engineering. I Was

In Fact Unrestrained Capitalism Is Quite Cruel And The Cost Is On The Individual Human, On His Or Her Grace.

The Millions Or Billions Of Micro Decisions That You're Going To Make, That's What Will Determine Who You Are As A Writer, Not You Deciding In Advance.

One Of The Principals Of Composition, I Would Say, In Fiction, Is You Want To Do What You Can Do A Lot Of. You Want To Do What You're Enthusiastic About And What Rings Your Bell. In This Case, Almost Every Decision I Made Was On That Basis.

Later, I Went One Step Further, By Putting In Some Invented "historical" Bits [into The Lincoln In The Bardo]. And Reading Those Alongside The Actual Historical Bits Was Like Looking Into A Sort Of A Painful Mirror, Because "my" Parts Were So Show-offy At First. They Stood Out Because They Were So Flamboyant.

If I Can Be More Efficient, I'm Actually Being More Respectful To The Reader, Which Then Implies A Greater Intimacy With The Reader.