Having taken a couple creative writing courses for elective credit, I’ve come away with a sense that when you’ve written something in the 1st person, people tend to think that you’ve actually experienced the things you’ve written about. This attitude is helped along when the protagonist of a famous novel is claimed to be a manifestation of the author in the story. And Garry Trudeau is on record as buckling under pressure from hardcore fans and acknowledging that Michael Doonesbury, the main character of his genius comic, is modeled on himself. Still, why is it hard for some people to believe that I didn’t actually fall overboard on a cruise ship and nearly die of hypothermia even though when it was my turn to read what I’d written, that’s what I read? It’s fiction, let me pretend to be a victim of near drowning! Actually, this whole post is an exercise in gullibility. The cruise ship story example would suggest that I actually wrote such a story and one day read it to my shocked classmates, when truly I’ve never written about drowning. Truly.