When you've written your characters into a corner, you just hand the manuscript over to your partner and make her fix it.

I have never written anything in one draft, not even a grocery list, although I have heard from friends that this is actually possible.

Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one?

Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?

Come here, cat. You wouldn’t want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow.

Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.