Interviewer: I have this thing where in order to feel productive I have to feel like I'm procrastinating -- so I'll take on a bunch of work, even stuff I don't really want to do, just so I have an excuse to put it down and pick up something else...
Eggers: Yes! You said it way better than I could. It's been that way for me basically forever. I was thinking about writing "Heartbreaking Work" the whole time that we did Might magazine --and that, for me, was competing with my time to maybe write that story out. And then I worked for Esquire for a year and I was supposed to be writing there but all I was doing was working on the memoir, for the most part. And then while I was stalling on that, that's where McSweeney's came from. I thought, "Fuck that, I haven't published anything and I don't know where I'm going with this memoir, but I have this idea for a magazine!"
You only want to work on the stuff you're not supposed to be working on. That's how it always is. I'll always be working on five things at once, usually with those documents open at the same time because if I get stuck somewhere I'll jump over to something else. That's how my head has always worked. I don't know if it's 'cause I watched too much TV as a kid or what. It really could be that.
