Susan “George” Schorn writes the McSweeney’s column Bitchslap, but she’s got a lot more to say. She’s a black belt, learned karate from a second-wave feminist and lives in a place where the Tex Mex is spicy and the pears are prickly. Her first memorable piece of writing was about a “shy little beer” (classic second grade “d”-and-“b” mixup), and her newest work is SMILE AT STRANGERS: And Other Lessons in the Art of Living Fearlessly, out May 28.

We asked her a few questions about the connection between writing and martial arts. By the end, she had convinced us that we are deadly and unstoppable forces. Enjoy these few moments of dojo.

Kaylen & Joanna: You write in the first chapter of your book that kowa means either voice or tone in Japanese. Aside from your meditation, has kowa affected your voice or tone in your writing?

George Schorn: I try to be mindful of the self-containment and restraint that epitomize kowa when I write. I also admire their tendency to invert established tropes or foil expectations. Those elements aren’t unique to Zen proverbs; I see them in a lot of writing that I admire. Kowa do distill them in a useful way though. They’re a good model of how an author’s voice and purpose should harmonize.

K/J: You also discuss proverbs and slogans in the first chapter of your book. A challenge: Can you share with us either an original slogan or a proverb that applies to being a woman writer?

GS: There’s a Romanian proverb I’m quite fond of and keep taped to my computer: “Orice sut in fund e un pas inainte“—”Every kick in the ass is a step forward.” That’s good advice for any writer, but for women especially, because we get kicked a lot.

I think it’s important to remember that when people disparage or thwart you, you have the capacity to turn that into something positive. In karate, being kicked is no fun, but it does provide you with useful information about your opponent—how strong they are; the types of attacks they favor; their weaknesses. As a woman writer, being criticized (or even worse, ignored) may be painful, but it can also open up opportunities. It tells you something about the character of the people you’re dealing with, for one thing. It helps you learn that you can survive being kicked—that you’re a lot tougher than you think. And it can even give you something to write about.

K/J: When did the idea for this book come to you? It seems like [spoiler-ish alert] the stressful professional setting you describe might not have been the most conducive for creative thinking…or was it in fact the stress that made creative thinking necessary?

GS: Writing a book while also working 8-5 is not an ideal creative environment. For the past couple of years I really couldn’t separate job stress from book stress. But stress and creativity are both constants in my life anyway; I’m not sure if one provokes the other or not.

The idea for a book of some sort had been with me for years, because I had long felt that the story of what went on at my dojo needed to be told to a wider audience. When I started writing my column Bitchslap for McSweeney’s, I was giving readers little snapshots of what I’d learned in karate. People started encouraging me to tell more about my life and family, so that provided a natural route into a longer work.

K/J: You bring up a very interesting point about how we use our different roles to achieve different means. What are your main “roles?” Do you consciously feel yourself slipping in and out them throughout the day in order to complete different tasks? How do you think the role of “published writer” come May will affect any balance you’ve achieved thus far?

GS: For me, the benefit of having multiple roles—wife, mother, karateka, teacher, employee—is that I can change the framework I’m responding from if I’m having trouble in one particular role, and I do that quite consciously throughout the day. The boundary-setting skills you learn in the dojo, for example, are very useful when dealing with kids. The patience that motherhood requires can be helpful in the workplace. And the sense of respect that I try to bring to my interactions with students is not a bad way to approach spousal conflict.

I’ve just filed a column over at McSweeney’s that addresses the already noticeable impact of my book’s publication on my personal and professional relationships. It’s been a curious experience. There’s a certain conflict between the role of “accomplished writer” people seem to want to assign to me, and the role of “lucky, lucky bastard” I see myself filling. Still working on reconciling those (as usual karate provides some answers), but fame is fleeting, so maybe it’ll settle down before too long.

K/J: You are raw and honest about growing up with fear and anger “that society seemed to think women should just get used to seeing themselves as victims.” How do we combat this patriarchal script as writers, artists and social thinkers?

GS: By any means necessary: Legislation, economic pressure, public mockery, and civil disobedience among them. But we can’t even get started on that until the problem is more visible, to more people. The “weak woman” stereotype is perpetuated in part by some truly well-intentioned folks. In a way, it speaks to our innate urge to protect the weak.

I have come to believe that when people approach the problem of violence against women from that perspective, it’s counterproductive to get angry at them. They’re motivated, at least in part, by a desire to keep women safe. So it’s more helpful to acknowledge that common goal, to try to explain how their approach maybe isn’t rooted in the best factual and statistical evidence (it almost never is), and to model alternatives for talking about the problem and solving it. I write about this problem in one section of the book, where I describe those horrible, stupid emails people send around, warning women to avoid certain hairstyles because they supposedly attract rapists. I always want to grab these people and shake them and say, “Don’t you realize you are MAKING THE PROBLEM WORSE?” They don’t realize it. You have to find compassionate ways to explain that.

K/J: Women aren’t often thought of as “warriors,” in the traditional sense of that role. What skills do you think a woman warrior who doesn’t practice karate might possess?

GS: The women I most admire, in and out of the martial arts, work steadily to build their own strengths, while not losing sight of their weaknesses. They stay curious; they ask a lot of questions, especially uncomfortable ones. They are honest with themselves as well as those around them. They speak up when they see a problem. They interrogate rumors, seek out reliable information, and share it with others. They balance healthy skepticism with optimism and trust. I have found karate very useful in developing those traits in myself, and I’ve noticed that many women who train in the martial arts share them as well. But there are plenty of other ways to hone those skills.

As you can tell, I have a very Enlightenment approach to warriorship (in fact I think Jane Austen would have been one of the most frightening martial artists who ever lived if she’d been born a century and a half later).

K/J: Last April we posted a guest column that analyzes the categories in TIME’s 2013 list of most influential people. Of the five categories, women were least represented as “Titans,” which happens to be a very masculine label (even though in Greek mythology, the Titans were both male and female). A samurai is also an image that triggers masculine assumptions, but you reclaim this in your text by relating your life to samurai code. Why is it important for men and women to reclaim masculine and feminine stereotypes in literature and media?

GS: Because no one gender owns idealism, and we should all be free to emulate admirable people, regardless of gender.

If we want an honest and just society, we have to acknowledge that no positive or negative label can be exclusively associated with a particular gender. And we need to reflect seriously on our past history of denying opportunity to people simply because of their gender (or race, or religion, or . . .). Megan Pearl made an excellent point in that TIME breakdown: that the male/female percentages were almost exactly reversed for “Icons.” Icons, of course, are images or representations of valued things, whereas Titans are real, literal giants, assumed to bestride the earth in corporeal form. I mean, good grief. Even for TIME that’s pretty unsubtle.

K/J: What aspects of karate can be applied to writing?

GS: One aspect that applies to both is the importance of doing continual, often quite boring work. Karate and writing are high-order skills. To become expert in them requires many, many hours of individual practice as well as expert coaching. You have to discipline yourself to do the grinding, not-at-all-productive-feeling daily work. Thousands of kicks. Hundreds of dispiriting freelance jobs. You have to have faith that all that monotonous labor is building your skills incrementally, in ways you don’t appreciate on a day-to-day basis. Ren ma, we say in karate. Constant polishing.

Another applicable concept is the knowledge that you are, when you apply your skills, an unstoppable and deadly force. A skilled martial artist or writer has the power to transform the world around her, for good or ill. We should savor that power, but also use it responsibly.