I generally have an idea where I want to go, but I don't know how I'm going to get there.

I do love that discovery of when you're trying to figure out how to make something work, and it happens in a way that you didn't predict.

I had read [Charles] Dickens's novels were often published serially. I thought it would be fun to write a book, just sitting down and writing a chapter every day, not knowing what would happen next. So that's how I wrote the first draft. And then of course I had to go back and make sure everything worked and change things.

Some of it just involved thinking about, for example, the different kinds of science, what chemistry is.

I don't feel like it's something I invented myself, rather something I absorbed and continue to do.

I had a general outline of subjects. The way I start my days is my husband brings me a thermos of coffee up to the bedroom.

I don't like things to be static when I'm working.