How unchecked is your ego? Most of us have moments where we like to think of ourselves as king of the forest (not queen, not duke, not prince) but generally we have reality to keep us in our place. Your parents can generally be counted on to keep you in line, not to mention your children. A good friend can deflate your head when it gets to Macy’s Day proportions as well, providing you are wise enough to listen.

Some writers, like Page Six celebrities, make the mistake of buying their own press — or taking that little voice too seriously, the one that is up late brushing up their Nobel Prize acceptance speech. (Most of us have enough daily humiliation dished up by the publishing trade that we don’t need any extra deflation.) A writing program I am affiliated with recently circulated the bios of my fellows and they were filled with the usual thumbnail sketches, who had published what where, and what accolades, if any, they had collected. But one writer, who shall remain nameless, was identified as “among the most gifted and celebrated writers of our time.”

Golly! If this were someone like, say, Joan Didion, who is in fact one of the most gifted and celebrated writers of our time, this might not seem so embarrassing. But this is merely a writer who writes a lot, and often not well, on a number of topics — a name you are familiar with but not one that would make you buy a magazine just because the writer was in it. Worse, these sorts of bios are submitted by the writers themselves, like the actors CVs that appear in the back of a playbill. No hiding place down here.

Of course it’s possible the writer’s agent submitted this piece of puffery for their client, unbeknownst to them. It’s not much of an excuse — kind of like telling the kids at school that your mom made you wear those stupid shoes that have made you a figure of fun at recess. But it’s better than admitting that you picked them out yourself. Most kids in those circumstances will go home to hide those shoes in the closet, never to be worn again.

It reminds me of a lunch I once had with the editor of a fashion magazine. We were discussing a writer who had made a career of sorts writing about his misadventures in dating. “This guy has dated every A-list woman in New York,” she said, “including me!” Made me wonder about the writers who tackled all the B-list babes out there, and what they did with their castoffs.