A friend and I were slugging back gulps of Maker’s Mark from the bottle one night last week during Squaw Valley’s unbelievably fun and helpful summer writer’s conference. I told her I considered myself not so much a writer, but a fraud. She absolutely agreed with me – that she felt like a fraud as well. The amount of alcohol we drank that night prevents me from remembering subsequent details of our conversation, but I wondered if anyone else felt the same way the following afternoon and I asked around.  Everyone I asked said yes, their eyes widened, they nodded emphatically, and seemed as though they’d spent extended periods of time thinking the matter over. By fraud, I don’t mean fabricating memoirs, or taking credit for other peoples’ stories, or anything like that, but for a long time, I’ve had this overwhelming guilt for being a writer. Hell, I didn’t even refer to myself as a writer until sometime last year. I’d call myself “a guy who writes,” or even say, “I write,” but calling myself a writer, the actual word, smelt of a lie. (Also, I’m sure we’ve come into contact with folks in college workshops, for example, who say things like, “As a WRITER, I feel that…”, followed by a litany of self-indulgent details about their life, which have little or nothing to do with whoever’s piece is being workshopped, so perhaps there’s some preference for dissociation in certain circumstances, but I digress.)

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