The Fraud

There’s something I want to do but I’m afraid to do it.  I want to apply for a writer’s grant.  The only problem is the one I want to apply for is for real writers.  I’m talking Virginia Woolf and shit.  Writers that write important, life changing novels.  Writers that people remember 100 years from now.    I write about farts, pooping in bathtubs after eating too many peaches, cannibals living behind Safeway and ,Jesus, just a bunch of meaningless crap.  I lack a lot, A LOT, of faith in myself as a writer (and a human being.)  I don’t like calling myself a writer because it makes me feel like a pretentious asshole. A complete fraud.  I say I scribble because when you say you scribble people think “Oh, you just write your weird little ideas down in your weird little notebooks” and they’re right.  To apply for this grant I’d have to submit some pieces of writing, some of my fiction.  Just thinking of that makes me throw up a little in my mouth.  And in my lap.  I imagine the form letter I’d get back: “Dear Ms. Hughes- Thank you for your interest in The Gift of Freedom writing grant.  However, we are not interested in stories about flatulence, black out drunk drag queens or the low self-esteem that happens at the end of the day when your foundation starts to melt.”