It's as if I'm setting aside the husband and son, you know, the patriarchal world, for the world of the muse. This is the world of writing.

After Fifty Shades of Grey, I think my writing is pretty tame, isn't it?

In the same way, the people whom I most abhor, I abhor them for elements that I abhor in myself.

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.

When I write, I put aside the heterosexual world to admit a muse that is a woman-loving-woman female.

The city and nature, the built stone and the found stone, concrete and slate, poetry addresses them all democratically.

When I spoke at the 2012 Contemporary Women Writers' Conference in Taipei, I thought it offered an appropriate moment and site to announce my new manifesto10 and profession - to be a writer.