I am a first-generation American. My parents are from a tiny little town in the southwest of Germany. I grew up with a lot of children of German Jews, and all I wanted to do in my life was to be American. 

I grew up in Miami mostly and I was such an oddball in my family because they were very European and I was very American, with the baton twirling and the cheerleading and all that stuff.  I went away to a big Top Ten college in the midwest and really lived most of my life as about as American as you can be.  I think that’s what I have in common with a lot of people in my generation who just wanted not to be the "other," wanted to be part of the group.  And I think that’s what I have in common, and not just with German Jewish first generation kids, but a lot of kids who felt their family was odd in some way and wanted to break free. 

Most of the people in the media world in New York probably don’t come from New York. I think we all just landed here because we’re comfortable here.

Because I’ve been a magazine editor, I’ve seen many resumes. Women’s resumes tend to go zig zag, zig zag, zig, where as men’s resumes tend to be more linear.  I’ve always been interested in that. I’ve had a lot of zigs and zags myself!

How did you get to where you are now?

My whole life all I really wanted to be was a journalist.  I love to write and I’ve always loved reporting and I spent many years as a reporter at News Week and thought that was it.  I really didn’t know that there was anything else in life to do but that, and then after several years I got hired as an editor at Esquire and then I was an editor, which is very different from being a reporter. 

I always wrote, even when I was an editor I wrote articles and stuff, and I was the editor of several magazines.  I went from Esquire, I started my own magazine called New York Woman and I did that for many years until it folded, and then I was at Harper’s Bazaar as Executive Editor, and then I was at a magazine called New Woman as Editor-in-Chief, and then I started a magazine called My Generation for baby boomers.  Before I started My Generation I started to write a memoir because, by that time, I had had what I could euphemistically call a very eventful life and was trying to make sense of it all. A lot of things had happened to me in a fairly short amount of time, and I had no way to absorb it other than to write about it.

After I wrote the memoir, which was—as memoirs are— quite revealing, I decided I never wanted to write about myself again or I never wanted to write the truth again, both.  I wrote a short story that turned into my first novel, The Orange Blossom Special, and then wrote another novel called Swim to Me and then The Puzzle King.  So the writing has always been in my blood and I think returning to it full time was something I did after I really probably exhausted my career as a magazine editor and reporter.

How do you see yourself differently now than you did 10 years ago?

Because I’m writing now, and because writing is a much more solitary life than the life I was leading as a magazine editor, I would say I am a much calmer person.  I have to stay focused.  When you do a magazine, you do 42 things at once and you’re never alone and no two days are the same.

My life now is far more disciplined. I’m my own boss and I give myself rules, and I try to accomplish a certain amount of writing or a certain amount of things every day.  So it’s a quieter life,  a more disciplined life, and certainly a more cerebral life and not one that I ever could see myself leading 10 years ago, to be honest.

I’m a very energetic person. I love to be around people. I’m a very collaborative person.  I’m not the kind of person that somebody would point at and say, “This one will sit in a library by herself all day and not speak to people”.  I could never see that I could be that disciplined or that I would be that quiet, frankly.  So to me that’s the surprise.  The fact that I’m writing fiction is a bit of a surprise since I’ve spent my whole life as a journalist.  Of all the things that have happened to me in my life, I would say that doing what I’m doing now is the biggest surprise of my life. 

As a younger person, I don’t know that I had a whole lot to say.  I don’t know that I would have sat still long enough and think long enough about one thing to be able to write a book.  I marvel at younger writers—some of whom are my favorite writers—that they have the story and they have the context.  I don’t think I did until a couple of years ago.  So in that way it does make sense and in that form of expression. I don't think I would have wanted to be that revealing years ago. For me, that came with maturity.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

You know, I’ve thought about that and I would be very happy if I were still writing ten years from now.  I can’t imagine not writing.  It’s become such a part of my life and such a part of the way I’m expressing myself and dealing with whatever emotions or conflicts or issues I’m facing in my life.  It is how I’m dealing now and I hope I’m always doing it.  I can’t imagine that I won’t be.

The thing about writing is, it’s portable; you can take it with you wherever you go and you don’t need a lot of equipment. And you can do it in a small space; you can do it in a big space.  I’m lucky to have it because I can just take it with me wherever I go.