Locus Online: Neal Stephenson interview

''[When I wrote The Big U] it was July, and the weather was boiling hot and humid. There was no air conditioning, so I'm sitting there in my underwear, pounding this thing out as fast as I can go. The plastic backing of the carbon film ribbon was actually softening in the heat, and if it stopped moving, it would adhere to the guides it was threaded through and seize up, and I would have to completely disassemble the typewriter and get it unstuck. So there was this huge incentive not to ever stop typing. That manuscript is full of these long, rambling, incoherent sentences, which were probably just me typing in order to keep the ribbon moving! Later, of course, it came in for some heavy editing