Often the biggest barriers are the ones that just keep us from getting started. When we work with writers, they have this great idea that is just itching to be brought to life. But many wonder if they’re good enough to do the idea justice. Or if they know enough to even really get started bringing it to the page. Writer’s often face what we culturally call “imposter syndrome,” or the idea that you’re somehow just “pretending” to be able to do what you’re doing. This week, Amanda relates how you can step past this feeling, defeat the imposter syndrome, and learn to trust yourself to write your book. Scroll to read Emily’s take!
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Recognizing Imposter Syndrome
“Imposter syndrome” has developed a cultural meaning of its own, and people in every field have described feeling it at some point or another. I’ve definitely felt it as a writer, but I also felt it as an educator, in my brief stint as a caterer, and in trying my hand at chess. The feeling is always the same, that I didn’t know enough to start doing it. But in nearly everything that takes skill and time, there comes a time when you have to pick up the chef’s knife, push pawn to e4, or sit down at the computer and confront the blank page. And that time, no matter what skill you’re trying to master or art you’re trying to produce, always comes a lot sooner than is comfortable. It’s never comfortable to make that transition from learning by observing to learning by doing, but it’s necessary to push through that discomfort and trust that you can figure it out as you go.
Why Writers Especially Need to Defeat Imposter Syndrome
When writers have an idea, it’s something that tugs at them and nags at them. It wants to be written and shared. Writers want to do their best by this idea, so they read other books that have similar ideas, they go down rabbit holes to find how other writers do it, and are constantly looking for answers to how to produce good writing. They are hungry for information because they want to do right by their idea! They owe it to that precious idea. They owe it to the idea to be as best possible writer they can be before they share that nagging idea with the world–they find themselves wanting to be experts before they ever pick up a pen.
But sometimes, as we search out answers for to all our questions, we don’t always recognize when we’ve learned enough to get started. Because the truth is, you can’t learn everything about writing in a life time.
No writer, alive or dead, has ever known everything about writing.
Writers, especially, need to push through this point and get started because of the nature of the beast. If you are fluent in the language you are writing in and have read full-length narratives, you have most of the nuts and bolts you need to create one of your own already. You can learn a lot more about structure, the preparation and process of long-form writing, strategies for getting past hurdles, and many more skills that will be helpful to you. However, that time to get uncomfortable and start applying all those things to your own idea comes a lot faster than you might think.
Embrace Learning by Doing
The first time you try to express an idea in writing, it’s not going to be all there, shining and clear. But that’s okay, because that is part of the process that every writer and every idea have to go through together. To defeat imposter syndrome, you need to recognize that it’s not just a lie you tell yourself about yourself, it’s a lie you tell yourself about others. If you think of “real” writers as those who have gained enough expert skill that they can sit down and express their ideas easily and without friction, frustration, revision, doubt, trial and error, false starts, mistakes, or angst, then let me assure you that in that case, “real” writers are fictional beasts.
All of us here, using this craft to share our ideas, are using the same basic building blocks. The work of finding the “right” way to use them is what we are all doing, every day. The more you write the better you get, the more confident you become and it gets a bit easier. The more you write, the better you understand your ideas. The more you write, the better you know how to use your voice to share them.
In fact, you can’t go through the process of developing and writing a rough draft without getting better. That’s the best news about writing–you can’t not get better as you write. The worst news about writing is that you can’t get better without writing.
You always want to keep learning, of course. We learn about writing by reading other’s work we admire, other’s work we don’t admire, and thinking about all of it with our writer’s glasses on. We read about writing (like this blog) and take as much as we can use from it all. But no one can tell you the “right” or “best” way to write your book because you have to learn that, at least in part, by doing it.
Turn Imposter Syndrome on Its Head
Imposter syndrome is a trap of circular thinking–so how do you get out if it? You turn it back on itself. There are some questions you can use to reflect on this pattern of thinking and learn to break out of it.
What areas are you definitely not an imposter?
All of us have things that we could try to do, and we would probably be immediately spotted as imposters. If I tried to step up to teach a yoga class, I’d owe some refunds pretty quickly. But we can also guarantee that you have areas of your life where you are certainly not an imposter. Reflect on those elements of your life. If you’re writing a memoir, that idea that’s nagging you to write it out, that desire to write has come from your own lived experience. Everything that you’ve gone through and everything that you’ve learned along the way–and that sounds pretty far from being an imposter.
What would it mean to be an imposter?
If you really step back, being an “imposter” just means trying something new. When we try something new, it keeps feeling new to us until we’ve already done it. And more often than not, a few times after that just for good measure. It’s extremely brave to step out on a limb and try things for ourselves. That is an amazing thing. When you can embrace the fact that what you are doing is incredible, you will have so much more respect for the things that you have learned about this craft, for the ways that you are developing as you set out to practice this thing that we call writing.
Where’s the bar, exactly?
What would it mean to not be an imposter? What would you have to have achieved to feel like you’re not an imposter?
There’s always a new challenge that we want to achieve. The problem is, that can keep you perpetually feeling like an imposter. If you keep raising the bar for what it means to be an imposter versus an expert, you’ll never be able to hit that bar and you’ll never be able to feel comfortable. Let’s define it. Let’s pin it down. Let’s make imposter syndrome answer for itself. What’s the bar? What’s the cutoff? Because the least we can do for ourselves is define it before we measure ourselves against it.
And if the answer is that you won’t feel like an imposter once you’ve written the book, then I think you know what to do.
Happy writing.
