I was in the fantasy. I was selling myself on the fantasy as I was doing it. It never occurred to me. I did take notes, but just because I am a writer. I've been a writer since I was five. You don't have any sort of outlandish, shocking, extraordinary, horrifying experience without writing it down, because I know and knew that you forget things. No matter how outrageous and amazing and extraordinary and seemingly unforgettable an experience is, it's kind of like a dream. It will erode inevitably, for me.

I absolutely think that women told that writing about themselves is somehow not worthy enough for a public audience all the time. I hear it so often from my students and friends. As if it doesn't take rigorous craft, and intellectual acuity to write a slammin' book of any kind. But perhaps, especially, about the body.

You don't have to write like David Foster Wallace or James Baldwin or Maggie Nelson - indeed, you shouldn't. Those writers are doing it better than you ever could.

When you conceal inner reality, this pressure builds. You often don't expose yourself until it reaches extremity, a breaking point, and what emerges is a dramatic shift - at least in the eyes of others, from whom you've hidden the truth. So, dropping out of high school was like that for me. I was fine, I got straight As, I had friends, and then boom, I was like, I'm done.

I've always looked very closely at people, and seen a lot; that was true even when I was a kid. That's what made me a good domme, but it's also what makes me well suited to being a writer, and a teacher.

I never think about anything in my brain. I think in very small repetitive circles inside my own brain. That's why I'm a writer. It's the only way I get any sort of conclusion or understanding about anything.

I can only see right in front of me when I'm writing, you know? I never think of it as raw or personal or anything but where I'm at in the moment. But I can see it sort of after I finish.