"Writing a novel is like writing an exam on which your whole life depends, every night for a year," poet and novelist May Sarton, inaugural speaker at the Open Forum, told an audience of over 450 last night at Cronkhite Graduate Center.

The Open Forum, sponsored by Radcliffe, brings prominent women to the Harvard-Radcliffe community to share experiences which have been important in their lives.

Sarton's speech, "Solitude and Creativity," dealt with her attitudes towards living alone and the subsequent effects of solitude on her writing.

"I would not advise living alone for anyone very young, because you've got to have something in your knapsack," Sarton said, adding that she did not live alone until she was 45, and by then she had experienced "a rather nice life from the point of view of friendships and lovers."

"I'm passionately in love with solitude now," she said. "Even for me there are moments of loneliness--that's the dark side. The bright side is being able to do one's work in peace," she added.