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?