Questions About Writing

How long did it take you to write the book?

    I started writing in January 2003 and finished in the spring of 2005. I wrote the draft of all the
    hospital scenes in those first winter months. Then I wrote through the year-by-year story of our
    sisterhood, roughly matching up the accompanying hospital scenes as I went.


When I started reading, I thought the italics were your sister's story. Later I figured out they were
yours. Did you do that on purpose?

    Sadly, no. Some readers have told me about a "Sixth Sense" moment when they figured out that
    I was the compulsive eater, not Joyce. Others pick it up right away. I never meant for anyone to
    think I was trying to speak for my sister. First, I can't imagine what would have offended her
    more than my doing so. Second, I don't know that she had an eating disorder of any kind. Her
    behavior was private, even secret. Mine -- well, it doesn't get much more public, does it?


What was the hardest part to write?

    Each part had its own challenges. It was physically exhausting to write about being in the
    hospital -- I think I was holding my breath a lot as I wrote. Writing about our sisterhood was
    exhausting in a whole different way -- I never thought I'd have to live through being a teenager
    again! My mom helped me through a lot of that, letting me talk through stories the way I
    remembered them, especially the ones that included conflict with my parents or sister.

    The sections describing what it's like to have a compulsive eating disorder were -- how can I put
    this. I didn't trust myself to write them in private. I was afraid I'd be more likely to harm myself,
    living through the worst of those feelings in order to write them. So I wrote them in public, in
    coffee shops mostly, where I could see people talking and reading and having a good time, and
    where someone was smiling as they served me a tasty beverage.

    I don't want to make the writing sound like drudgery, though. There's absolutely nothing like the
    feeling that you've gotten a picture in words exactly right, that you can feel what the words are
    going to do to the reader, or for the reader. It's electric and it's addictive.


Did you really remember all that stuff or did you make some of it up?

    I really remember it. I should say: I wrote it exactly the way I remember it. I kept pictures
    around me from each year as I wrote. And I'm lucky -- I remember childhood vividly. Being a
    strange child who used to play a game of trying to remember whole days and who would go
    through my surroundings touching and memorizing things finally paid off. The aunts and uncles
    in Texas, my cousins, and my friends confirm that I pretty much got the details right.

    Anyway, there's not anything made up except for the passage where I imagine my sister's
    thoughts as she takes photographs. And even that is based on my watching her face and hands
    over the years as she held her cameras.  All the conversations in the book really happened and
    are recorded as I remember them. All the people are real, though their names are changed. And
    though I didn't look at them until I finished writing my own account of the hospital scenes, I do
    have my sister's medical records from those six weeks and used them to confirm timelines and
    vocabulary.


Are you writing another book?

    Yes, though much more slowly than I would like. Just because I wrote a memoir doesn't mean I
    know anything about writing a novel! But that's what it is, and here's hoping I stay in good
    health and figure out how to make this writing business move more quickly, because it's planned
    to be the first in a series of four novels following an American woman through her life.

    Believe me, I'll keep you posted!
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