Many women my age have known the experience of giving up crucial parts of themselves to please the man they love.

Many women my age have known the experience of giving up crucial parts of themselves to please the man they love.

Nothing like being visible, publishing one's work, and speaking openly about one's life, to disabuse the world of the illusion of one's perfection and purity.

My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer?

I think of myself as a realistic writer, not a creator of soap opera or melodrama.

As for me, I've chosen to follow a simple course: Come clean. And wherever possible, live your life in a way that won't leave you tempted to lie. Failing that, I'd rather be disliked for who I truly am than loved for who I am not. So, I tell my story. I write it down. I even publish it. Sometimes this is a humbling experience. Sometimes it's embarrassing. But I haul around no terrible secrets.

More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue.