I'm in my 60s, and a cancer scare just makes you more aware of mortality.

Even after the mothering dropped because my son grew up, the writing - the muse - was always the third wheel, the lowest on the priority list.

No matter how sheltered [my students] are, no matter how their parents try to do right by them, every single one of them, you know, every single one of us, that's what we all face. And so it's made me - that's the one change I've marked in myself - it's made me change in the way I relate to my students. I've become a different teacher in that way.

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.

In short, for me - I'm kind of projecting onto you - distraction has become a modus vivendi, a way of life. Rather than complaining, I am recognizing that I couldn't do what I wanted to do because I'm distracted.

The problem of the female body is not something that I've studied, but my memoir does treat that theme.