If I COULD turn back the CLOCK, magically deleting my prostate CANCER, the surgery I needed and its complications, would I do so? It seems an odd QUESTION. But I find it surprisingly hard to answer.

I had some REAL HEALTH complications with my HRT - hormone replacement THERAPY.

We were from a predominantly WHITE AREA, my DAD was BLACK and my MUM was white, so that had its complications.

I was in the HOSPITAL for about TWO WEEKS because I had some complications DUE to the transition to kidney from dialysis and getting off of that.

In the world of the AMERICAN creative writing WORKSHOP, I've encountered teachers who are tempted to place, or have actually PLACED, a moratorium on child narrators. Students love to write them, but children COME laden with complications.

I think, as JOURNALISTS, we sometimes are afraid to enter into the emotional lives and the complications of the lives of the people we write about - we don't really have the space and the room to DEAL with those things. But as a novelist, that's precisely what you're WRITING about.