I Want Women Writers To Write Boldly,

I Wrote Before I Could Write. I Got My Hands On A Journal, Maybe A Hand-me-down; I Had Three Older Siblings. My First Entries Are In The Handwriting Of The Sister Closets In Age (5 Years My Senior). She Must Have Gotten Tired Of My Dictations Because She Gave Up And Then My Blocky Scrawl Shows Up. I Wrote Plays As A Kid Mostly.

Literature Has Done Great Work For Feminism - Writing And Reading Are A Practice Of Empathy - And Great Literature Will Continue To Do So.

And I Know I'm Supposed To Feel Guilty For Wanting People To Buy My Books... And Books In General? Novels And Poetry, They Belong To The Realm Of Art. How Dirty Of Us To Try To Hawk Art! But, After A Decade Of Hand-wringing And Apologies, I Can't Quite Muster The Guilt Anymore.

Try To Think Of Writing As A Gift - More Complexly Put: It Is The Curse And The Cure.

It's Not That I Bounce Ideas Off Of My Children As Much As It Is That Having Children Has Had A Profound Effect On The Way I See The World. They Have Mined My Soul. They've Made Me A Better Person And Therefore A More Empathetic Writer.