Men might be chastised for being promiscuous, but I think they're more likely to be given a pass, due to a "men will be men" attitude that still prevails in the Western world. They don't usually experience anything like the virulent shaming and verbal abuse that women who are sexually adventurous are sometimes prone to experiencing.

Men might be chastised for being promiscuous, but I think they're more likely to be given a pass, due to a "men will be men" attitude that still prevails in the Western world. They don't usually experience anything like the virulent shaming and verbal abuse that women who are sexually adventurous are sometimes prone to experiencing.

Tangentially, Americans, despite many of us being prone to sometimes-eyebrow-raising disclosures about our private lives on social media, still retain what I think of as reactionary views about sexuality and intimacy.

I keep a couple of notebooks too into which I record ideas for story titles or characters or situations, and these notes help me quite a bit when I'm feeling at loose ends and not sure of what to work on next.

So much of what determines our happiness, I believe, is who we choose as our intimates.

Sometimes I do work on a longer manuscript in tandem with one or two shorter pieces - whether it's a short story or an essay (though I don't write many of the latter).

I think it takes a very generous and tolerant non-famous partner to stick with the famous person, especially if s/he wasn't famous when they first got together. And add to it the fact that the Web makes it extremely easy to meet admirers... well, there are a lot of temptations to be ignored, or else embraced.