Well, one of the — I was trying to sort of keep my ego in check for one thing. So, I worked anonymously for a while until I realized that you’re not really taking responsibility for what you have to say. So, it’s kind of that thing about, when you look at a story, or when I look at a story, and I go, I wrote that, I think of all the stories I’ve heard from people, and all the other books I’ve read, it’s just to me ludicrous to claim something like that is yours, and not a culture’s. You know what I mean? Because so much of the people that spoke English, and bits and pieces of stories we hear in card rooms, and all of that. You didn’t really create those, but they’re all exerting their influence.

So, in a way I was honestly confused about what — who owned a poem, you know, who owned the story, when there were so many things go into the telling of it. But you’re the one that’s sitting there, writing, and choosing the words. So, I thought at some point you have to take responsibility for your choices. So, I’m still conflicted about it. I mean when people say, “Oh, you, you wrote this?” You know, I just wince in a way, like yeah, I wrote it, I wrote it down. I mean archetypal stories like Stone Junction, is an obvious coming of age, right? A young man coming of age, he sort of gets over his head, I mean, that’s like an archetype.

And I didn’t create that archetype. All I did was sort of fill in some blanks in the story, created a few characters. But it’s the language I chose to tell it in, and the style it’s told, and the point-of-view, and all that stuff were my choices. So, in one way, you have to take responsibility for that. But in another way, it’s just ludicrous to say, “This is my intellectual property. I made this.” Well, you did make it, but you didn’t really. It all comes back sort of to a simple question of what is the self? And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become kind of a convert too. It’s probably the worst idea of the last 2000 years of human history, because it flatters ego and the ego has enough problems without being flattered.