In Fatty, readers follow a woman who leaves her life in the capital behind to start over in a quiet seaside town, where she takes a job at an underfunded museum and searches for a fresh beginning. What inspired you to write this story as a diary novel?

The path to writing Fatty and turning it into the book it is today was a really long one.

Let’s start from the fact this is my first published novel. I had produced some non fiction books, with co-authors, on my own, but everyone, who has anything to do with publishing, they know fiction is entirely different. To be honest, I have always loved novels, and sometimes I had the idea to write one myself. I had many ideas and stories, some of them even became drafts, but none was ever finished or published, even if I worked in publishing for some time.

Before starting this novel, my main project was a history novel. Contrary to previous efforts, I decided to take writing seriously: I bought books about how to write a novel, received some as gifts, I was taking parts in seminars, watched countless tutorials, and etc. Not to mention I researched the historical period I wanted to write about very extensively. I even joined NaNoWriMo several times, the November novel-writing challenge. Still, all I had was a plot outline and a few chapters. It took me such a long time because I wanted everything to be historically accurate. Once you begin researching, you realize just how much there is to learn, and it becomes overwhelming. Eventually, it was too much and I stopped for a while.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened. The life I knew came to a halt, the whole country stopped, and everything was put on pause. Like many people, I struggled with depression during that time. Then I had an idea. The historical novel was meant to be serious and perhaps rather dark, writing it was difficult and demanding, so I wanted to write something completely different. I wanted to write a book that would be easy and enjoyable to create.

I came up with the idea of a woman moving to a completely new environment and building her life from scratch. At the time, I was also thinking about changing my own life. The first draft was written during the pandemic in my native language. It told the story of a woman whose life in the capital falls apart and who ends up working in a museum in a small coastal town. The museum was inspired by one I had seen while visiting a friend at a writers’ residency in a small seaside town. While I was there, I thought, “Since I’m staying at this residency for a few days, why don’t I start writing this book?”

Everything in the story seemed idyllic. It was meant to be a funny, optimistic novel with elements of a detective mystery. I wanted it to have those mystery elements because there is an audience for that kind of book, and I had loved mystery and detective novels when I was younger.

The protagonist moves to the small town to start her life over. Where the idea of her riding a scooter came from, I honestly don’t know—I can’t explain it. She works in the museum, and the first draft was written as a video blog. Each chapter was essentially one of her video blog posts about her life in the museum and the adventures she experienced there.

Then life happened. The pandemic came to an end, I became involved in other projects, and I put the manuscript aside.

Surprisingly, I eventually got a job in a small-town museum. I changed jobs, worked there for some time, and after many ups and downs, I once again found myself unemployed, with plenty of free time—this time living in the countryside.

One day, sitting beside a burning stove, I thought, “This is the perfect time to rework and finally finish this book.” I still believed it was a good and positive idea. At that point, I was also disappointed that, once again, my plans and ambitions had collapsed.

At that time, I was using AI quite a lot because I was living alone in the countryside, and we had an extremely cold winter, so it gave me some useful ideas about surviving harsh winter. I thought that if it was helpful with such a task, maybe it can help with the book: I couldn’t figure out how to finish and edit the book myself.

So I uploaded the draft and asked it to improve it. I’m sorry to say this, but I was really disappointed with the result. It was turned into a very clichéd novel with clichéd plot twists and predictable characters. I thought, “No, thank you. If I want this book to be finished the way I imagine it, I have to do it myself.” Besides I thought my life now is so uneventful and with no real challenges, so lets rewrite this book in english, to add a challenge.

So I went back to the manuscript and completely rethought the plot. The central idea remained the same: a woman whose life collapses, a museum, a scooter, and the rather bizarre object of her affection—a firefighter. But I reconsidered almost everything else.

The more I worked on it, the richer the small-town setting became, because this time I could draw on my own experience. By then, I knew very well how life in a small town worked.

Once I finally had the plot in place, another realization came to me. The book was becoming much more complex and layered than I had ever intended. Yes, it was still funny and humorous in many places, but it was also sad, thoughtful, and emotionally deep. None of that had been part of my original plan.

I realized that the protagonist had become believable. Even though I hadn’t initially wanted readers to see her vulnerable and sad side because I thought it might make her less appealing, I understood that the only way to make her feel like a real person was to let her be completely honest.

That was when I realized that the diary format gave me exactly what I needed. In a diary, she could reveal everything—her insecurities, her fears, her humour, her thoughts, and her imagination.

As I kept writing, I began to feel that she herself had become the novel’s greatest strength. Not simply because I liked her, but because I genuinely believe she is an unusual and compelling protagonist. Even the most ordinary events become interesting because of the way she thinks, the way she interprets the world, and the way she reacts to it.

The more I wrote, the more convinced I became that the diary was the only possible format for this story. It allowed her to be completely sincere, completely herself, and therefore the most engaging for the reader.

If the story had been told as an interview, she might have hidden parts of herself. If it had been narrated by someone else, we would only have seen another person’s interpretation of her. But what makes this novel interesting is not only what happens to her—it’s the way she experiences everything.

Her thoughts are the novel’s greatest asset. She has a very unusual way of thinking, and almost all of her adventures begin in her imagination before they happen in real life. It is her strange associations, unexpected decisions, and vivid imagination that constantly lead her into unusual situations.

From an outside narrator’s perspective, it would be difficult to understand why she insists on riding a scooter or why she decides to make a fat suit. Those ideas sound completely absurd. But because the reader is inside her mind, following her reasoning step by step, they begin to make perfect sense.

The same is true of many of her projects and adventures. She gets herself into extraordinary situations because she acts on her imagination in ways that most people never would.

That is why I believe the diary novel was the only format that could truly capture her character. In the end, what matters most in this novel is not the events themselves but the protagonist’s perception of them. Her way of thinking is the real story.

How did you balance the narrator’s humor with the emotional weight she carries?

To be completely honest, I never intended the narrator to carry such a serious emotional weight. In the first draft, it was a fun book. Even the way she talked about her ex-fiancé, the collapse of her life, and her job situation was humorous. It was all covered in just one chapter, and she mostly laughed about it.

When I returned to the manuscript for the second time, after everything I had experienced myself, I started rethinking the plot and the character. I realized that I owed the reader an explanation of why she is the way she is. A funny character alone would have been too one-dimensional.

As I started writing, all of those more difficult experiences emerged naturally. I wasn’t forcing them into the story—I simply needed to understand, even for myself, why she had become this person.

If she hadn’t gone through so many challenges in her life, including very painful ones—such as losing her father at a young age, which is an extremely traumatic experience—she would have become a completely different person. And, to be honest, I think I would have liked her less.

She is engaging precisely because she has experienced pain, disappointment, and loss, yet she still approaches life with humour, compassion, hope, and curiosity. She carries both sadness and joy at the same time. That’s who she really is, and that’s what makes her interesting.

So the balance between humour and emotional depth wasn’t something I consciously planned. It emerged naturally as I developed her character. Once I truly understood who she was, the balance came on its own.

Even her reflections are often both funny and sad at the same time. My real challenge wasn’t balancing humour and emotion—it was creating a believable character. Once I got the character right, everything else followed naturally.

Fatty explores burnout, loneliness, friendship, and second chances. Which of those themes became most important as you wrote?

There are many important topics and themes in this book. However, the most important of them is creating your own unique life on your own. Why is that? Because despite the fact that protagonist is not alone in this world—she has people who care for her and who love her—no one is showing her the path of how to live her life. She has to figure it out on her own and create it completely by herself. In fact, some people, like her mother, completely oppose her new life, while other well-meaning people, like her colleague, try to push their opinions on her so that the protagonist will think less and not step outside the box. As these well-wishers think, it is for her own benefit to not stand out, to stay small, and to avoid getting hurt. In a way, it’s like a modern-day Robinson Crusoe, where you have to recreate your life completely and do it on your own without any manual. Society often pushes us—without meaning any harm, of course—to pursue something or do something that isn’t fitting or good for us. People actively oppose what we do if they think it might not be beneficial, or if we stand out too much and bother others.

Instead, the protagonist has to deal with everything herself. It is deeply symbolic that she is completely alone on her journeys, in her thoughts, and in her self-assessment. Because she is unique, no one can really be there with her; people don’t understand her because she is just too different. To be different while simultaneously finding your own path is an immense challenge. But what you have to realize is that even though everyone might oppose you at first, once you succeed, everyone will be applauding you. It is the only way to reach true success and genuine happiness.

If readers finish Fatty feeling one emotion, what do you hope it is?

I hope readers will reevaluate their own lives and rethink their choices, and that they have achieved way more than they are telling themselves. Fatty is the manifestation of how a popular, brand-filled life is not necessarily suitable for all of us. It might be good for someone else, but we need to reevaluate what our achievements actually are. Sometimes, fixing your own toilet is a much bigger achievement than climbing Mount Everest—well, maybe not a bigger achievement, but certainly a way more useful one!

This book encourages us to look into our everyday lives and reevaluate them: to see both the beauty and uniqueness of our lives, as well as our own vulnerability. In fact, Fatty is a manifesto for the so-called ‘small and unimportant’ things—the things society tells us don’t matter, but which are nevertheless deeply important and far bigger to us personally. All of our feelings, our pride, and our sense of fulfillment can come from these very small things.

Also I hope readers will catch a virus of compassion. Compassion and kindness should lead us in how we should create and arrange our lives. The protagonist is very compassionate towards all the strange and beaten up people, but most of all, she is compassionate towards herself. She never really judges herself after she falls, and no matter what crazy idea she has she never judges herself for implementing it. She is her own best friend. I would like that kind of kindness and compassion would stay with readers.

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