I Think A Lot Of Artists No

You Could Time A Suburban Story By Your Watch: It Lasts As Long As It Takes A Small Furry Animal That's Lonely To Find Friends, Or A Small Furry Animal That's Lost To Find Its Parents; It Lasts As Long As A Quick Avowal Of Love; It Lasts Precisely As Long As The Average Parent Is Disposed On A Tuesday Night To Spend Reading Aloud To Children.

What I Increasingly Felt, In Marriage And In Motherhood, Was That To Live As A Woman And To Live As A Feminist Were Two Different And Possibly Irreconcilable Things.

The Creativity Of Childhood Was Often Surrendered Amid Feelings Of Unworthiness. So The Idea That ­others Are Demanding To Be Given It Back - To Be "taught" - Is Disturbing.

I Was Aware, In Those Early Days Of Motherhood, That My Behaviour Was Strange To The People Who Knew Me Well. It Was As Though I Had Been Brainwashed, Taken Over By A Cult Religion. And Yet This Cult, Motherhood, Was Not A Place Where I Could Actually Live. Like Any Cult, It Demanded A Complete Surrender Of Identity To Belong To It.

Like The Child, The Creative Writing Student Is Posited As A Centre Of Vulnerable Creativity, Needful Of Attention And Authority.