I was so immersed in writing this book, that I didn't think about how it might be received. I was involved not merely because it was hard to write -- keeping the plan of it in my head I wrote it from start to end, consecutively, and it was difficult -- but because of what I was learning as I wrote. Perhaps giving oneself a tight structure, making limitations for oneself, squeezes out new substance where you least expect it. All sorts of ideas and experiences I didn't recognize as mine emerged when writing. The actual time of writing, then, and not only the experiences that had gone into the writing, was really traumatic: it changed me. [...]