There’s a delicate balance between actor and context—one becomes vulnerable without the other. I felt like a person—with a strong personality—and then I just didn’t anymore. My context slipped and I lost my footing, my sense of where I was in the story. Without a sense of context even something like how to spend a Saturday gets confusing. And instead of instilling rhythm and meaning time becomes this giant existential blob you have to tunnel through.

AK: Do you think imagination is altered when time stops instilling rhythm and meaning? 

MO: That was my experience to an extent. A lot of your energy goes into restoring that sense of rhythm and meaning, so that you enter a kind of survival mode, and things get pretty basic. I remember distinctly the feeling of being great friends with my mind, and enjoying the time alone I got with it, say, in the moments before I fell asleep at night. And then I remember, for a time, not feeling that way anymore. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that it happened at a time when I was supposed to be entering the world as an adult, which is itself an act of imagination.

AK: Speaking of rhythm and meaning, do you follow a writing schedule? As you’ve developed as a writer, how have your writing habits evolved? 

MO: “I’m a creature of rhythm”—as opposed to habit / routine / discipline—sounds so much more appealing, so I’ll go with that. I do tend to work (and live) more freely when I have some structure. So I usually spend the mornings dawdling, reading, running, then get down to work in the afternoon. I don’t have many glamorous or outré habits when it comes to writing. I’m always happy about it afterward, but for me the late-night idea rush is a little like a rogue boyfriend: you’re not going to turn him away, but it’s still a kind of imposition. I seem fated to live out a contradiction between the eccentric and the very square, and it shows up in every part of my life.