What physical tools do you use for composition?

Well, actually, I probably work primarily in this old school device called 'notebook' where I, you know, fill pages with illegible text, and then once I start to think that my text is coming together, very often I'll do a version of it—just type it into the iPad.

What I do a lot is—I've brought some examples of this, if you want to see them—I write a lot when I'm walking. I take long walks and scribble in a notebook like this one. Just usually individual lines—let's see if I can find some examples. And then often I will transcribe them onto note cards.

I think actual writing is almost all on computers now, but note-taking is probably 75% notebook and pen, and 25% take notes on the computer.

Well, the last couple of books, I've written a lot of it longhand, which was a great surprise, because everything up until Averno was written on a typewriter. All of the composition.

My files are up here to the right. They're artist sketchbook, so they're unlined. And I take notes from the reading I do in those, and I also include (in green ink) my own responses to the things I'm reading, or things that occurred to me that might turn out to be germs for lines. So, I do that longhand.

I mean, if I'm somewhere and all I have is a piece of scratch paper because I'm in a meeting and I get an idea. But I don't really do that often.

My favorite kind of paper is very hard to get. I'm forced to use this because it's very hard to get this. I don't like the lines. I get that somehow society doesn't take this very seriously anymore. You can get it white, I don't want it white...I want it yellow.

I draft poems by hand and then I'll go back to the computer and go sometimes back and forth. Prose, I write on the computer.

Well, if I'm generating new material, I will certainly do a certain amount of writing by hand. I capture, at various points, the material in a Word processing program. The one I work with most intuitively is Word 2003. I'm annoyed at all the extra ridiculous functionality.

I work in longhand, on yellow legal tablets, or just whatever. I have different notebooks that I have. That's what all these notebooks are here; these are my various writing projects in process. They each get their own little notebook.

I have pencils and pens and note books.