I live in the middle of nowhere and I'm an insomniac. I just make the time and I read and write really fast so that makes a lot possible for me. I wish I had an explanation for it. I'm grateful for it.

I thought a lot about how so many memoirs about fatness focus on weight loss; they don't focus on living with weight in a world that is rather inhospitable to it. So I knew that was the idea that was going to be most interesting and most challenging, and I like to be challenged as a writer.

I look at my older writing to see where my weaknesses are and then I try to address those weaknesses and make new mistakes.

I've always wanted to be a writer. I've been writing since I was probably four years old - it was nonsense, but it was still my little attempts at being a storyteller.

I write toward both idealism and reality - how things are and how I wish they could be.

I believe women not just in the United States but throughout the world deserve equality and freedom but know I am in no position to tell women of other cultures what that equality and freedom should look like.

So many of us are reaching out, hoping someone out there will grab our hands and remind us we are not as alone as we fear.