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“We don’t all have to be sorority sisters or wear pink on Wednesdays. Women can be large and contain multitudes, too.”

— Amy Chozick, on what it means to have multiple female candidates for president

Welcome to the In Her Words Elevator Interview — a summer series showcasing the voices of Times writers and editors, which we attempted to conduct inside our (very slow) corporate elevators, but then the elevator broke, and actually that wasn’t really enough time to ask what we wanted to ask anyway, so now we conduct them over email.

This week we spoke with Amy Chozick, a Times writer-at-large and best-selling author of “Chasing Hillary,” which documents her decade covering Hillary Clinton’s pursuit of the presidency.

IHW: Tell us about your routine. What do you do to start your day and how do you wind down at night?

I used to think that I would spend my mornings rocking my baby while listening to Otis Redding, and it’s more like picking up thrown cereal while listening to “Baby Shark.” We’ve usually already gone to Trader Joe’s (pro tip: Trader Joe’s is bliss at 8 a.m. on a weekday) and Target and, depending on the weather, a swing set, by the time the caregiver arrives at 9 a.m.

I always walk to get my coffee. This is totally unnecessary as the train is across the street from my house, but the 30-minute walk is my daily ritual, my time to put the chaos of the morning behind me, listen to an audiobook or podcast, and get in the mind-set for work. I get to the office by 9:45 or 10 a.m.

After work, on an ideal day, I make it to a cardio dance workout class in my neighborhood. (I have zero rhythm, but five minutes in I feel like the Jewish J-Lo.) I also like boxing because sometimes you need to punch something. I get home by 7 p.m., and start cooking dinner. I could burn toast if left to my own devices, so it’s usually a HelloFresh meal kit. Our son has gotten into the habit of turning off the oven while I’m cooking. This cracks him up. It also adds at least 15 minutes to the process. My husband changes him and puts him to sleep around 8 and we eat dinner. We watch some TV (usually some combination of “True Detective” and “Bachelor in Paradise”). We talk a little and stare at our phones a lot. Around 10 p.m. I’ll take a CBD gummy bear. People say it’s a placebo or snake oil, but don’t knock those little suckers until you’ve tried them.

Do you have any writing rituals?

Pre-baby, when I was writing my book, I had this whole ritual that involved an iced red eye (cold brew with a shot of espresso), leggings and some real ergonomic jujitsu at my dining room table. That’s impossible now, so I come to the office and listen to jazz. I still need to be heavily caffeinated, but sadly can’t wear leggings. I wish I could write more in the mornings because that’s when I’m the most creative and productive, but, well, “Baby Shark.” The great thing about being a beat reporter for so many years is that you can’t have writer’s block or be picky about creating the perfect environment. You have to just do it … writing on my lap on a campaign bus in rural Iowa really helped me realize that.

In moments of self-doubt, how do you build yourself back up?

I am constantly doubting myself. We learn as journalists that we’re only as good as our last byline so now that I write features that can take months, I have these long periods when I feel like I have disappeared and will never write another story. I am a failure, a nobody, I will die alone under a pile of tawny newspaper clippings. This is when my editor, Ellen Pollock, says, “Amy, you had a story last week.”

Your book documents your time covering Hillary Clinton, and you recently wrote a piece for Vogue about the current cohort of women candidates. What difference do you see in how this new generation of women are rolling out their campaigns?

I don’t think we can underestimate how meaningful it is that so many women of so many different backgrounds and beliefs are competing for the Democratic nomination. Think about it — before 2020, we’d never seen multiple women on the presidential debate stage. They have permanently changed our perception of what a presidential campaign looks like and taught us (hopefully once and for all) that women can disagree with each other without it being a catfight. Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris and Tulsi Gabbard all have vastly different visions for the country and guess what? That is fine. Healthy, even. We don’t all have to be sorority sisters or wear pink on Wednesdays. Women can be large and contain multitudes, too.

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What else is happening

Here are five articles from The Times you might have missed.

“There was never any Serena without Venus.” Venus Williams changed the course of women’s tennis. Did she ever get her due? [Read the story]

“An unprecedented amount of negative publicity.” Harvey Weinstein wants his trial moved out of New York, arguing that media scrutiny makes it impossible to find an impartial jury. [Read the story]

“I give it to whomever I please.” A new hit TV show in Senegal has set off a fierce debate over contemporary womanhood and female sexuality. [Read the story]

“Here I don’t have to hide who I am.” For gender-nonconforming campers, a new cabin at Camp Tawonga in California is a respite from the outside world. [Read the story]

“Inspiration is like the urge to pee: If you don’t attend to it, you will regret it.” A week in the life of the stand-up comic Aparna Nancherla. [Read the story]

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From the archives: Gayle King, Lorena Bobbit and Hillary Clinton

Three pieces by Amy Chozick you might want to reread.

Hillary Clinton: “They were never going to let me be president.”

In July 2013, Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The Times, put Amy Chozick on the “Hillary beat” ahead of the 2016 election. It was 649 days before Mrs. Clinton would announce she was running for president again; 1,226 days before she would lose to Donald Trump. Every major life decision in her 20s and 30s, Ms. Chozick writes in her book — when to get married, where to buy an apartment, whether to freeze her eggs until after the election — had revolved around a single looming question: What about Hillary Clinton?

Lorena Bobbitt: “They always just focused on it … And it’s like they all missed or didn’t care why I did what I did.”

You probably remember the story. How in 1993, Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband’s penis with a kitchen knife as he slept. How she then disposed of the detached penis out the driver’s side window. How she later told the police where it was, they found it, put it on ice and rushed it to the hospital, where in a nine-hour surgery it was reattached and restored to (almost) full function. In January, Lorena Bobbitt opened up about how that one night changed her life.

Gayle King: “Surely there must be room for some redemption somewhere.”

In the swirl of #MeToo, perhaps no woman has found herself at the center of the storm quite like Gayle King. Millions of viewers have watched, again and again, as she and her co-host Norah O’Donnell of “CBS This Morning” have had to explain — live on air — the alleged misdeeds of executives at their very own network, like Charlie Rose and Leslie Moonves. Last fall, Ms. Chozick interviewed Ms. King about her decades long career in broadcast news.

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