Of course, sometimes when you write personally, you are also writing about society, obliquely reflecting topical issues, but not in a way that people would expect you to or in the way that someone trying to make a point would.

In the end, my pursuit of the elusive New York State driver's license became about much more than a divorced woman's learning to drive for the first time.

Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that there's a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life.

Writing is always personal in some way but not always in a direct way.