Time To Pretend: Writing as a Writer

I was recently on Margaret Atwood's website (see link under websites I like) and read some advice she has for writers.  One thing that stuck with me is when she talks about what makes a writer, not necessarily ever coming to a conclusion, but anyway, she first talks of others suggesting that all you have to do is write something down and you are a writer, but she uses the analogy, "everyone can dig a hole in a cemetery, but not everyone is a grave-digger."  I had already been thinking about this, again, after all the writer/author talk from before.  This time I'm not really thinking about what makes a writer, but what makes me a writer? (or what doesn't)  Sometimes I don't feel like a writer, or even someone who practices the art of writing, but more like someone who pretends the art of writing.  I feel like a fraud who is just pretending to have something to say, so that I don't have to study engineering or something.  Quite awhile ago now one of my friends told me that I was her favourite writer.  I take this as a great compliment (even though I know it is 100% biased, in part because we are friends, and in part because she has never read anything that I have written) but at the same time it makes me feel like more of a fraud, like I can create this persona of being a writer.  I can con people into believing that, but there's really no substance behind this writer mask.  


I love writing, but I rarely write for anything other than assignments.  Sure, I start stories.  I write down ideas for stories, but I don't finish them.  Some of my friends (who are involved in film and theatre) and I sometimes talk about our desire to create, usually when we are drinking.  We talk about how this desire is a part of us, that even if we can't make any money at our individual crafts.  If we are forced into some sort of office jobs, or choose other career paths that we will still create.  I'm not always so sure I would.  I want to be a person that would, but the last couple summers I have taken off, in part because I just didn't want to get a boring job or wake up at 7 or 8 in the morning, but also to work on my writing.  And I did some of that, but I also got caught up in summer projects, in summer parties, and in general socializing.  Sometimes I think I would be better off if I didn't like people so much.  True, there are probably a lot of people that I don't like at all, but when I find people I like, all I want to do is hang out with them.  And over the years I have accumulated quite a good group of people that I would gladly waste my life away, just hanging out for eternity with.  The summer that MGMT's 'Time to Pretend' came out my Dad said, "listen to this song.  It reminds me of you and your friends."  Now first of all, although yes my Dad is often the embarrassing, annoying father (just like everyone else's?) he does often have good taste in music and movies (a bit of a hint that he was once, probably, a cool person).  Second of all, I hope that he never meant all of the heroine and cocaine and choking on vomit and dying parts were what he sees happening for me, or my friends.  But, I don't want to get a job in an office, and I think I might be fated to pretend, but at the same time, I don't know if that can continue.  How much pretending do I have to do before it counts for something?  Cause I don't plan on stopping.

Here's the song in case anyone wants to listen to it.