“Like general contractors, writers are famously optimistic when it comes to estimating how long a project will take. Fortunately, publishers are more forgiving than homeowners; deadlines are routinely extended one, two, even three years. But there is another category of writer, one for whom the laws of space and time seem to disappear altogether. Years bleed into one another as file cabinets bulge with extraneous information… Only by scratching away the layers of Liquid Paper on the line of the contract reading ‘delivery date,’ as if it were an instant lottery ticket, is it possible to ascertain when exactly the manuscript was first due.”