Questions for Carl

Question from reader: I just finished reading View from Lazy Point and and I wanted to know how you craft such a lyrical, beautiful book using so much scientific reference material?

Answer from Carl Safina: I have a bit of a system. I have an idea of what I want to cover. I travel to the places that will get me into those topics. That becomes the contour or framework of the book. Then I read and take notes on reference material related to those topics, and use those notes to round out the story. As I work I constantly stumble on or root out new information, and that gets added too. The language itself is just a process of editing many times, and trying to make it sound good to the reader's ear (and my own). It's not as easy as that, but it's not any more complicated, either.