The most difficult part of writing the book was the emotional and physical toll. I worked in the newsroom during the day; I wrote at night; I rarely slept or ate. I was simply consumed by the work I was doing. I was swept up in “the vortex” as Louisa May Alcott called it. Only toward the end of that period did I really feel I was losing strength, and that was due to the immediacy of some of the grief I was writing about—my fresh separation from my former husband.