...as an entry on a message board forum yesterday:

All my life up to age 39 in 1986 I knew I enjoyed writing with a quirky knack but I was not a writer. A writer had to be a special person, I thought. I was an ordinary working-class office worker and people like that could not get creative writing published. By the accident of fate in 1986 I had one of my shorts (Padgett Weggs) published in a fanzine. I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. I wrote stories up to the year 2000 and submitted them in millions of places and over a thousand were published in lots of different places. But I remained unconvinced I was a writer. I still am unconvinced and I gave up submitting them in 2000. I still write a lot and put them on the internet. Someone published a book (Weirdmonger 2003) of a small percentage of my published output. I am still not a writer. I was correct originally. Some people can't break out of their inability to believe beyond the humility (lack of self confidence) with which they grew up as a child. I am still that child. I will write till I am dead. But I shall never be a writer.