The Canadian writer Sheila Heti approaches writing as though it were a puzzle: scattered pieces of plot, dialogue or image that possess their own internal logic, and that come together, under her guiding hand, to create something deliberate and wholly  its own. Over the course of her 20-year writing career, she has written about the death of a parent (Pure Colour), a woman’s decision to have children (Motherhood) and the existential problem of how an artist should live their life (How Should a Person Be?). Her most recent book, Alphabetical Diaries, creates a kind of surrealist parlor game out of her personal diaries, rearranging their sentences alphabetically so that they form their own exquisite sense.

Rhian Sasseen: Many of your books are organized around constraints—there are the coin flips in Motherhood, and the diary entries in Alphabetical Diaries. Does the form of the book come before you know what the book is about, or vice versa?

Shelia Heti: I guess the form comes first. With Motherhood, I was flipping and asking questions of those coins for a few years before I thought, I want to write a book about motherhood. I liked what was happening when I was doing it. I liked the way it would push my mind in new directions. I’ve always tried to write for as long as possible without knowing what the book is about, until an inflection point where I start to need to know. 

RS: Is the inflection point different in each book?

SH: At a certain point, I become a little impatient with the feeling of not having an idea or a form or a vision. It’s different for every book, but it’s still the same sort of feeling—like, now I’m just wandering. For a while, it feels fun and exciting, and like I’m discovering, and then it feels like I’m walking in place. 

RS: Does physically walking ever become a part of the process for you, or is it more metaphorical?

SH: I think it’s more metaphorical! I walk a lot because I have a dog, and I like thinking while walking, but I don’t think I take walks to think. The different stages feel different in my body, metabolically. When you’re excited, and when you have a form in mind and you’re working towards an end, you feel like a different creature than you do when you’re just completely wide open and exploring. I’ve been doing this for so long now that I’m starting to have a little more patience. I know that each phase is a phase. I used to get more worried or frustrated with myself when I was in the early stages, like, Am I ever going to figure out what the book is about? I understand better now that this is just the necessary place for it to be… It’s like a relationship: There’s infatuation, and then there’s arguing and fighting, and trying to actually adjust to it. And then there’s some kind of peace. You start to see the way these things repeat across relationships, and it’s the same thing with books.

RS: Was it emotional to go back and read through your diaries for Alphabetical Diaries?

SH: Not really, because I never went back through them. When I started the project, the first thing I did was alphabetize them, so I never read them over. There would be sentences that would make me remember whole scenes, but I don’t think I’m very emotional. I never really feel a lot of emotion when I’m writing, apart from excitement. Alphabetical Diaries wasn’t really like writing. It was editing. I never felt inside of it, in the way that you do when you’re creating something from scratch. With editing, you feel a little detached from it when you’re doing it. You’re sort of evaluating; you’re not really lost.

RS: How do you approach editing versus writing? In an essay on the artist Sara Cwynar, you once compared shopping and writing to “selecting.” Is editing also selecting?

SH: Writing is selecting, but on a more unconscious level and on a much deeper level, whereas editing is more deliberate. With writing, you’re trying to be a little looser and less deliberate—more open to what happens or what surprises you. I think with editing, you have an idea of what you want, and you’re trying to get there.

RS: Is there always an element of chance in the writing process?

SH: I don’t know if it’s chance, or if it’s more that you don’t know why things come up for you. It’s like dreaming, but they are dreams that are being brought to you for reasons that you’re not quite certain about. I think it’s more like that than chance. You don’t know what’s generating the images that you come up with.