Make pumpkin bread as the default gift for everyone. It is cheap, it is beloved, it is carbs.

Tell your mother that any clothes she wants to purchase you as a gift has to be suitable for a job interview.

Bread, potatoes, rice and pasta are starchy carbohydrates, which should make up a third of your diet. They are cheap - especially if bought in bulk - versatile and full of energy. Plus, they fill you up. They are also easy to cook, if you only have a two-ring hob or are fighting for space in a small kitchen.

That's the gift that a mother can give, to make everyone feel like they are the special one.

When I wrote my stories in elementary school, I signed them all 'Karen E. Bender' with the squiggly 'E.' I wanted, from an early age, to be a writer, and that name - that E - was a way of pretending I knew how to do it.

You sit at your computer for hours, then slave away at your job that you may or may not like. You don't know how to explain to them that the time when you feel alive or present is when you are writing.