I am most pleased by the speed, flow, and emotion of the language. The topic is intense, I brainstormed it intensely--and that intensity comes through for me every time I reread this piece. The only goal I had when I fixed on this topic was to see where the word "fat" would lead me. So, I can't say the essay falls short in any way because I was led to places (pictures, feelings, realizations) I had never experienced before.

How did your essay develop, both in your initial thinking about it and in the revision process? What happened in writing that you didn't expect would happen?

I read Margaret Atwood's essay "The Female Body" and knew I wanted to write something like that: a loaded topic handled with fast, clever writing in separate, fact-and-telling-detail-filled sections. I came home from eating at the mall one day, wrote most of the first scene, and thought I had a subject. I researched fat in the human body, with special inspiration coming from a photographic guide to dissecting cadavers. I looked at Lane Bryant catalogs. I free-wrote about twenty pages, associating fat with myself and every person, family and not, that came to mind. The focuses of the various sections, as well as key sentences and phrases, came from this free-writing.

If you write in other genres (poetry, fiction, playwriting, literary criticism, etc.), how does your experience writing in creative nonfiction depend on or depart from your other writing?

I write poetry as practice for my creative nonfiction. It helps me stay with specifics, eliminate unneeded words, and expand the topic beyond my conscious mind.

Give some of your reflections about creative nonfiction as an emerging genre in American literature. Where do you see it going in the next several years, or even farther down the line?

People read creative nonfiction and say, "The best part is, it's true." I don't know why, but the demand for "true" stories written in rich and interesting ways, has much to offer to meet this demand. At the same time, the commercial market is, I think, boringly saturated with "fact" articles. I hope that commercial editors will open their minds to creative nonfiction as the next new hook for selling magazines.

What are the specific literary techniques you attempt to use as a creative nonfiction writer? For example, do you attempt to write in scenes? Do you employ dialogue? Do you employ specific detail? How and why?

I think in sense-pictures so my essays are built around scenes. Often, as in "Fat," it's a particular scene-experienced through all senses, including the emotions-that makes me feel I have a story. I don't generally use extended dialogue: I am more likely to use a single sentence that makes my point. I don't think a creative nonfiction writer can do enough observing of details; what needs to be limited is how many of those details make it into the story. When I've brainstormed my topic to the point of having a feel for all the directions it could take, I pull back from the scenes and details and work on the underlying structure--the arrangement and tension that will make the story's progress seem inevitable and irresistible to the reader. This structure is to me the most essential-and least obvious-aspect of writing creative nonfiction.

What advice might you offer to young people interested in writing?

The best thing I ever did for my development as a writer was to learn how to draw. Drawing training, done well, teaches you to recognize the perceptual shift that allows you to really see details and frees you from your conscious mind. I have also learned much from analyzing the story structures of good essay writers.