What if you are, in fact, a fraud? How does that change anything? Are you going to stop writing or stop subbing or stop writing your column? Didn't think so.

Focus on the work.

Did I just say that? Wow. I guess I really am a fraud.

Damn the torpedoes...full steam ahead!

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Not so much about writing, but quite often when people tell me how spiritual or reliable I am.

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You're a fraud, Smaug, and you really ought to give the ten thousand bucks back to that widow before you start spending it.

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The pseudonym (basically a compression of my first and middle names to initials) is also much easier to write out as a signature. More practical, in the unlikely event that I sell something of merit and have to sit in an obscure bookstore, waiting for at least one person to approach the desk.

I rarely feel a fraud in the sense of being a not-good-enough writer. It does bother me, from time to time, that I give out advice on writing in forums like these and have even published (and been paid for) articles on writing without having a single fiction publication to my name. But... the thing is, it's advice. People can take it or leave it, and many have done both. I'm ever-cautious about handing out ultimatums, especially to beginning writers, and overall more people seem to have been helped (or ignored me entirely ) than have been hurt.

More to the point, I am a writer. I have written two novels and submitted them. Neither have been accepted for publication (yet), but that hasn't stopped me learning a great deal in the process. Writing isn't like getting a medical degree, where one either has credentials or is a fraud. Writing is something you learn on your own, with practice, with patience. The publishing business is, sadly, still a bit of a lottery. You can be unpublished and a good writer; you can be published and crap.

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I tried my name and the names of a couple of people I know, but I can't say they were on the money for any of them.

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Well, perhaps you don't know them or yourself as well as you think you do. Remember, the man always knows. That's so he can keep us down.

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This name restricts spontaneity in association and the fluency of your verbal expression.....You can express your deeper thoughts and feelings best through writing.

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Fake it so good that they publish a fraud by mistake.

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Writing in itself is selling your idea to someone else, and making it theirs. Where would any author be without the imagination of their readers? Text on a page can never match what people can dream up, so the skill in writing is not the eloquence of the words or structure or anything like that, it is the ability to convey your ideas in a way that allows the reader to make the idea their own and expand upon it in their minds.

Why do some writers get publish while others don't? It may simply be the same difference between why we eat chicken eggs instead of duck eggs.

Ducks lay their eggs with a 'Quack' and they're done.

Chickens start with cackling, scratching, and a lot of wing flapping. They progress to nervous fidgeting and loud screeching about the advent. When at last the egg is laid, it arrives with a cresendo of vocal protestations. The event is then followed by a vigorous and agitated inspection of the egg.

On the whole duck eggs are larger and taste just as good as a chicken egg, the promotion, however is completely different.

In fact I've never been known Professionally as Matthew Lust and the one Scholarly article I've published to date was as Matt Lust so I'm more or less stuck as Matt.

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what all of you are getting in exchange for your fraudulent writing.

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The first questions creative artists' tendancy to feel inadiquate in the face of public display of talents. The other questions their motives.