"Stephenson summarizes his communication policy as follows: Persons who wish to interfere with my concentration are politely requested not to do so, and warned that I don't answer e-mail... lest [my communication policy's] key message get lost in the verbiage, I will put it here succinctly: All of my time and attention are spoken for--several times over. Please do not ask for them. To further justify this policy, Stephenson wrote an essay titled "Why I Am a Bad Correspondent." At the core of his explanation for his inaccessibility is the following decision: The productivity equation is a non-linear one, in other words. This accounts for why I am a bad correspondent and why I very rarely accept speaking engagements. If I organize my life in such a way that I get lots of long, consecutive, uninterrupted time-chunks, I can write novels. But as those chunks get separated and fragmented, my productivity as a novelist drops spectacularly."