Women face enough pressures and challenges in a workplace that is still depressingly biased against a female's success. Add to that, the fact that the very thing many women I know find most rewarding (having kids) is now frowned upon.

I am a marathon worker and marathon mother. I'll spend three or four days completely swallowed up by work. And if I make it home in time to say good night, I may have one good hour with the girls, maybe a brief family dinner or a family walk with the dog, and then it is back on the computer to prepare for tomorrow's shows.

I was fired at the pinnacle of my career, on my 39th birthday. And in the year that followed, I learned that there are many psychological phases of being 'let go.'

I don't want to impose rules on people, but you have only a short window, and you're sorely mistaken if you think you can put off having a family. It's very hard to find a good man, and it's never a 'good time' to have a baby if you have a career.

It's no coincidence that I began writing the day my daughter started school. I knew everything I knew before I began to write, but I was raising two children and didn't have the time to get to the typewriter.

I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?

My mother brought up nine children, in Hackney, and none of us are criminals, none of us in jail. Her strength made me who I am today.

I'm happy to be at home with the kids, in my flannel pajamas; that's a treat.