I read contrived memoirs by presidential candidates. For every 'Dreams From My Father' - Barack Obama's honest, literary portrayal of his biracial upbringing - there were a dozen cautious, formulaic vanity projects by politicians.
Every major life decision in my 20s and 30s - when to get married, where to buy an apartment, whether to freeze my eggs until after the election - had revolved around a single looming question: What about Hillary Clinton?
Throughout her career, many women would view Mrs. Clinton as an imperfect vessel for the feminist cause. She was a Yale-educated lawyer who, at the height of the 1970s women's movement, moved to Arkansas to put her own ambitions on hold in furtherance of her husband's career.
I always chose the byline.
I was crashing with a boyfriend on his couch in Fort Green. At first, I was temping - insurance agencies, nonprofits - and then, in between temping, I was going on job interviews, and I could name 12 publications, some of which no longer exist, that didn't even call me back or interviewed me and had no interest.
In 2007, I went straight from Tokyo to Iowa to join Hillary Clinton's traveling press. I felt like a foreigner there, too. I remember thinking, 'Americans are huge.'
I've always been a voracious reader.
Growing up in San Antonio, I was the dork at the Friday night football games with my head buried in a book - Jack Kerouac or Oscar Wilde, years before I really understood them.
Let's just say I didn't get invited to a lot of frat parties.
I'd spent my first 12 years in New York in an East Village walk-up. The upstairs neighbor was the cowboy from the Village People.
I grew up in a quiet suburb in South Texas, and loved the in-your-faceness of the East Village. In the early days, when I was still unemployed, I'd lie on a bench in Tompkins Square Park perusing the listings in the 'Village Voice' for a place to live.
The Fox News makeup treatment is unlike any other in journalism. It involves false lashes, layers and layers of foundation, and heavy applications of come-hither lip gloss.
Women get exhausted and beat down, and you just want to cry.
I think, when you become a politician, if you talk about religion too much, you're pandering or something.
It's fun to play a part in the process of helping to inform readers about their political leaders.
I do think, with any beat, it helps to establish a basic level of comfort and cordiality, especially if you plan to ask uncomfortable questions. Sitting down in person for a meal or a coffee can help that.
I had been a foreign correspondent in Japan for the 'Wall Street Journal' when my editor there became Washington bureau chief - this was 2007 - and he said, 'How would you like to go to Iowa and cover Hillary Clinton?' I was 28. I went to Iowa.
I think you find stories with fresh perspectives, and there can be a danger in the opposite way when you start getting too cynical and things just don't start seeming like stories, and things don't seem exciting anymore. It's like, 'Yep, this is my fourth caucus, and I know everybody and know everything and I am writing just to impress my friends.'
You can't write a book about Hillary Clinton and not anticipate some blowback, so I always knew it was going to be something.
Everything I saw in Japan was a story to me.
