Wrestling with our inner imposter

Do you ever wonder if you are the fake in the room?

Recently I had the privilege of hosting a memoir workshop with a dear friend at a local library. We put it together last minute and didn’t know if anyone would attend, and then we wound up hosting a packed room of writers. It was such a fun morning, and we led them through different writing prompts so after an hour they would have two base stories to continue writing on! It felt like there was a deep discussion to be had among the writers, so at the end we had an impromptu question and answer session. My friend Cathy, who I hosted with, has written two books and is working on her third and is published, while I have self-published one and am working on my second. We opened the floor, and questions began to come in about various parts of writing and publishing books. And suddenly one remark absolutely floored me.

“Hi there,” a polite woman said shyly from a front table. “I have a question as I am just starting to write my book. How do you overcome imposter syndrome when you are writing”? Wow. I was stunned at such an authentic and revealing thought. It felt like one of those questions that everyone thinks but no one asks. I loved it!

Cathy and I immediately looked knowingly at one another and laughed a very quick, “Wow, yes!” Imposter syndrome can be very common, but people struggling with it experience repeated feelings or thoughts that they are incompetent or not good enough, despite evidence to the contrary. Writing is a HUGE place where people struggle with imposter syndrome, but I feel like writers starting out don’t realize how common this is!

Turns out many famous and lauded writers have felt the same.

“I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people.”

—John Steinbeck

I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘Uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out’.”

— Maya Angelou

It would be silly to think that only writers feel imposter syndrome, as many people all over the world feel it in many situations, but writing is a uniquely personal and creative endeavor. When you put your writing into the world, it feels like you are birthing a child or baring yourself naked. And the question I kept asking myself as I began was, “Who told me I could do this?” The answer was that no one told me I could or should or would; I just felt it in myself and followed that burning call.

What I love about new writers asking in a workshop if us ‘seasoned writers’ (hah) ever feel imposter syndrome is that it helped me to see how far I had come on that. Now I call myself a writer and have it as a title on my socials, business card, and website. Saying it doesn’t make me cringe or want to hide. I am aware that I am allowed to call myself a writer if that is what I do, and I have every right to that title.

And I know I am not an imposter because I am just being myself, the only thing I could be. If I don’t show up and speak and write and share, then no one will hear this voice and these thoughts. These thoughts might be boring, or badly written, or an insight someone has thought before in a different wording, but they will be mine. I can’t be an imposter when I keep showing up as myself. It’s up to the audience to decide if they want to listen, but I am showing up as myself, and that is all I am asked to do.

The longer I go as a writer, the less I worry about people viewing me as a writer. And I even worry less if I am good at it or if people will like it. They all won’t like it, but I will have the satisfaction and pride in knowing I bore what was in me and that I followed my fire. How can you have regret about that?

So to all you writers-to-be, to all you creatives in waiting, to all those with something burning inside them, but you are afraid you will be an imposter if you try, I tell you to follow your fire.

You can’t be an imposter if you are showing up as you. And I don’t know how to fix the world’s problems, but I do know our world needs more people who are alive, who are creative, who are making art, who are speaking truth.

So speak, write, create, and bring into the world what only you can bring.create, and bring into the world what only you can bring.

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