In a recent tweet during #Chance2Connect, I said, “You make up stories where people overcome impossible odds, yet think you’re not worth paying attention to just since you never left your chair. You’re more than a character & you may feel like an impostor, but the only impostor’s the lie saying you’re no good.”
That’s about the whole of it. Impostor syndrome is being an incredible writer who puts together worlds and believes they are no good at all. It’s one of those lies that we tell ourselves about how we’re not good enough to do what we do and no one will ever care. In an industry that, by its very nature necessitates a high level of rejection, it’s really easy to listen to that voice and believe what it has to say. Moreover, it’s really easy to fall for the same lie over and over and over and over again. I do. I call it my mid-book crisis where I’m positive everything I’ve ever written is utter garbage.
The way through that is to keep writing even though I have zero confidence in it. In essence, I fake it. It feels worse than slimy, questionable canned tomatoes with a metallic tang you know is going to eat a hole in your stomach. Another strategy to fight an attack of impostor syndrome is to have close writing and non-writing friends who will lovingly smack you hard enough, and then hug you and tell you that’s a huge lie. Other times, you’ll cry and believe the lie for a while, but fight back and be on guard for it. When you see it coming, it’s so much easier to isolate it as the lie it is and keep writing even when it butts it’s unwanted plot-skunk stench into your awesome writing and tries to derail you.
Watch out for impostor syndrome. Tell it that not only are you enough, but you are more than enough. You are the creator of worlds and fictional people who are shaped entirely out of words. You’re Superman in Clark Kent’s clothing, and you are no impostor.