The body in defense against male appropriation expresses itself through work in writing, and the work in writing produces the book. So it's a different form of creation and generation that may be viewed as creation without male contribution as a component or challenge.

In some ways it is absurd for me to assert, counter to evidence, that I have not been writing.

I'm surrounded by men, and the muse is complaining that I have neglected her.

Even today, I'm much more comfortable dressed in a male kind of way.

When someone asks me now, "What do you do?" I will be able to say, "I am a writer."

Some Asian American male scholars have claimed this muse to be Guong Goong, God of Literature, and, simultaneously, although not coincidentally or triflingly, God of War, but I did not have such a gendered muse in mind then.

Sometimes, in my published complaints about not being a writer, I have recalled the prospect - the yearning to be a writer - as it first formed for me.