Writing Through Imposter Syndrome
You are never an imposter on the page
So many of us feel like an imposter in so many situations. My own particular imposter feelings stem in some way from growing up as ‘separate from the world’, and as I left that religious group, finding so much of the world strange and involving rituals I didn’t understand. What am I supposed to do on my birthday? How am I supposed to feel? I know that feeling like an outsider or an imposter can still be my default mode. Setbacks and rejection can trigger those feelings and it’s like I’m young again and feeling very alone.
With writing, imposter syndrome is rarely about how we relate to the page in the moment. It’s about how we were taught to talk to ourselves- our harsh inner critic- and how that impacts the way we interact and react to the social and institutional spaces of writing: the writing industries, universities, workshops and events, and how all this intersects with wider structural and historical issues of inclusion and oppression.
This post can’t begin to deal with the complexity of these wider questions. What I want to do is share some of the ways I write through these moments of self-doubt. This is how I take back power when I write.
Writing Through Imposter Syndrome
My approach is to write into these feelings, to understand them and to write through them.
Every time I try to silence this kind of feeling, to shut it down, it just comes back worse later on.
Instead I…
Name what I am feeling
In this moment I feel…
Ask, where do I feel this in my body? I describe the sensation.
I feel this in my… It is…
Why? Where do I think this comes from? Why am I feeling this? Free write for ten
minutes.
I write permission to feel this and why.
It’s OK to feel this because…
I write three ‘what if’ reasons it might not be true
What if…
I list three recent achievements, whether big or small.
I have…
Then I turn to my writing.
What I want to write about is…
I set a timer and do ten minutes of writing.
Or, I write down a list of small writing tasks, breaking these into individual stages, then set a timer to do as many as I can.
This approach has helped me. I hope it helps you. xx
Next week: How I deal more specifically with my harsh internal critic through understanding how harsh critical upbringings can impact the way we process feedback and deal with making mistakes. I’ll share some of the writing I do to overcome this.