Just in case you are feeling unappreciated as a
writer, I found this little tidbit on the web about one relatively unknown
hack --
Michael Crichton was a star basketball player in high school (he was 6' 7"
in 10th grade) and he graduated from Roslyn High School in 1960. Crichton then
decided to go to Harvard University and become a writer. But Harvard proved to
be very disheartening for the young writer. His writing style was severely
criticized and his grades hovered around a C. At the age of eighteen he decided
that it was Harvard, and not he, that was in error. Convinced of this he
hesitatingly retyped an essay of George Orwell's and submitted it as his own.
The professor did not catch his plagiarism, and gave Orwell a B-. Crichton was
convinced that the Harvard English Department was too hard for him.