Writers in the Storm

There’s a lot written about Imposters Syndrome. Most of it attempts to reassure us that feeling like an imposter is normal. I’m not here to argue with that. But too many of us do not realize how deviously imposter syndrome can invade your creative life. Or how to overcome the syndrome.

Imposter Syndrome Defined

Clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes first coined the term Imposter Syndrome (I.S.) in 1978. According to Wikipedia, the Imposter Syndrome is “a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. It is not an officially recognized psychological disorder and is not among the conditions described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but it has been the subject of numerous books and articles by psychologists and educators.” 

There was a time when we believed more women suffered from the Imposter Syndrome than men did. Unfortunately, time has shown that no one is immune to these feelings. It happens to all creatives, including writers, to celebrities, to politicians, to tradespeople, and to stay-at-home parents. And the phenomenon has been around for a long time.

Examples:

Remember when Sally Field accepted the Oscar with her statement, “You like me. You really, really like me!” Yup. That’s a sign of that Imposter Syndrome. Aw, you say, she’s an actress, she doesn’t count. So how about Albert Einstein who said, “The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” Or former President Woodrow Wilson when he said, “I use not only all the brains I have but all that I can borrow.”

Signs of Imposter Thinking

Imposter Syndrome is sneaky. It’s not always the same signs or the same way of thinking. Your brain is clever that way. It devises new ways to “protect” you. Here are some thoughts that suggest you have Imposter Syndrome.

• Diminishing your accomplishments by saying something like “it’s not a big deal.”
• You quit your job soon after a promotion that you felt you didn’t deserve.
• Creating a perfect story, aka perfectionism, keeps you from completing your work. 
• You procrastinate on things to be done. If it isn’t done, then you can’t be “found out.”
• Insomnia and migraines have been called symptoms of imposter syndrome as well. (Please, if you are having physical symptoms such as insomnia or migraines, seek medical attention to rule out other causes for those symptoms.)
• You look at another writer’s awards and accolades or best seller rank and think you will never be as good. You are suffering from comparison-itis, another form of imposter thinking.
• Writer’s Block has many causes. But it can be a sign of this syndrome, especially if your thoughts are leading you to believe this temporary stoppage means you aren’t a real writer. 
• Finally, in extreme cases, there are some who take refuge in more destructive behaviors like addiction to alcohol or drugs. Please seek professional therapy for these types of behaviors.

The Neuroscience of Imposter Syndrome

Psychologists have identified four main primal drives that helped all animals, including humans, survive. They are: fight, flight, feed, and mate. 

Few people dispute humans would not have survived much of the last two thousand years without our fight and flight mechanism. Fortunately, early humans developed a very strong, instinctual way of reacting to the threat of death that they lived with every day. 

This means that our brains instinctively give the highest priority to these drives. Instinctively, our brains look for reasons we must fight to survive first, and if fighting isn’t survivable, we instantly take flight. Once we no longer need fight-or-flight, our brains will prioritize feeding ourselves in order to survive. Finally, we mate to ensure our survival. 

Luckily, some of us have moved beyond the physical fight for survival. Many of us do not have to fight off a bear or lion or other imminent death threat. But even when we don’t have a physical death threat at our door, our brains still have that fight-or-flight instinct. So our brains look for the next “best” threat and turn it into a life-and-death issue. 

We may know logically that the “threat” is not that kind of situation, but we don’t start with our thinking-brain. We start with our feeling-brain. And we feel afraid. 

When we feel afraid, our brain kicks in the fight-or-flight instinct. We act to protect ourselves. Unfortunately, what we think is protective is not helpful in the least. But we don’t know it because our feeling brain tells our thinking brain what think and those thoughts become what we believe. Notice that there’s no logic built into our instincts. 

The good news is that we can do something. We can learn from our fears and eventually believe differently. 

Ways to Supercharge Your Writing Life Against I.S.

Stop the Argument

If the number one culprit responsible for how we behave is our feelings, how do our feelings usually manifest themselves? Self-talk. Our brains start a running dialogue that reinforces the fear of that death threat (real or not). To combat the Imposter Syndrome, we need to counteract that running dialog based on fear.

There are many ways to address our fearful, negative self-talk. First, we have to notice it. This might mean you need to meditate on the thoughts and feelings you are experiencing. Journaling may help or reading self-help books or courses. Always check the bona fides of any book or mentor or therapist before choosing one. Professional organizations are the best option for finding reputable sources of help. 

If your negative self-talk includes suicidal thoughts, to talk with a therapist now. If you don’t have one or cannot afford one, reach out to your nearest public health department, your church, or in the U.S., call 988 (English and Spanish). Outside the US, try this list of international hotlines. 

On the August 6, 2023 episode of the Writing Excuses podcast, actress and writer, Kirsten Vangsness, discussed Imposter Syndrome. She suggested you can stop the argument by acknowledging you are an imposter. She says she understands that there is a part of her that constantly is trying to destroy her. Knowing that, she can recognize that self-talk and learn how to deflect or defeat it.

By acknowledging that she is an imposter, Kirsten is embracing her fear. Sometimes, simply saying I’m afraid is enough to help diminish that fear enough so you can move through the fear. 

Reframe Negative Thoughts 

Reframing is a psychological “trick” to turn a negative thought into a positive one. 

Example 1: 

Negative: Author XYZ sells more books than I do. I must not be a good enough writer.

Positive: Even though she sells more books than I, I still sell books. 

Example 2: 

Negative: I can’t take a break. If I’m not writing, I am not a writer.

Positive: Surgeons go on vacation and they’re still a surgeon. Ergo, writers can go on vacation (or take a break) and still be writers.

You can use this technique to quell any negative thoughts you wish to change. It’s not an instant fix, but over time, it can make a vast difference in your thoughts.

Self-Compassion 

Recognize your bravery and your persistence. Writer, you are brave when you act in the face of unreasonable fear. Believing you aren’t good enough is a fear. Continuing to write despite that belief/fear is an act of bravery.

You are persistent when you take the hits and keep moving toward your writing goals. No matter how small the hit to your writer's pride or identity, you keep writing. That’s persistence.

Life can derail your writing for a time. But honor what you have done. You have written. Honor what you are doing — you’re still learning, you’re still writing. The derailment doesn’t define you. You are a writer.

Know Your Why

You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t passionate about writing. But do you know your why? Why is writing the thing that makes you feel most alive and full of purpose? Do you have a message you want to share? Do you want to entertain? Why? Dig deep. When you know why you want to write it will help you fight imposter syndrome because it gives you focus. And it will keep you keep coming back to that focus.

If you feel you’ve lost your way, perhaps your why has changed. That’s okay. As we learn and grow and write more and more, our why often will change. 

Find your why and it will be your center and your compass. 

Feed the Writer’s Well

You’ve got to take care of all of you. There are four parts of each individual: Physical Mental Emotional and Spiritual. Nurture these parts of you regularly. Every day is the best, but whatever works for you. The activities you do in order to feed these parts of you are uniquely yours. Don’t do something because someone else says it’s “good for you.” Do what fills your well. 

1. Physical

Get movement into your day. That doesn’t mean run a marathon unless that’s your thing. It can be any kind of movement that you can keep doing for twenty minutes or more. Dance? Stretching? Swimming? It doesn’t have to be a rigorous exercise routine. You can take your dogs on a leisurely stroll around the block or play catch with your little one or indulge in chair yoga. 

2. Mental

The mental well you have will be unique to you. Maybe you read nonfiction to fill your mental well. Maybe you do crosswords or you do math problems. This is about exercising your brain in a way that isn’t writing. 

3. Emotional

Find your joy. Include something that gives you great joy every day or two to three times a week. This doesn’t mean letting your joy steal time from your writing, it means find moments of joy. Some call these moments joypennies. What is it that gives you a moment of joy? 

4. Spiritual

Find what feeds your soul. It can be religion, but doesn’t have to be. What feeds your soul is whatever you decide it is. It can be a walk in the park, music, viewing art by the masters, or petting your animal companion. 

Focus on Progress

When you fear you aren’t a “real” writer, you focus on things that are incomplete or didn’t progress as you wanted. Instead of allowing your fear-motivated-brain to control your focus, focus on the progress you made. 

Did you learn something new? Did you write for ten minutes? Keep a record of your progress. Decide which type of measure means the most to you and track it. Some writers track pages written, some track word counts. You may need to track the time you spent learning or writing. 

Spreadsheets make your eyes cross? Don’t use spreadsheets. A simple list of tasks will work or a special journal for each project. The point is to measure and track for each step, no matter how small it may be. Then, when your Imposter Syndrome flares, you have something to look at and remind yourself that you are making progress. 

Celebrate Your Wins

Congratulate yourself for every step forward, even the small ones. Every one is a win. 

Celebrations stimulate the release of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine, the “feel-good” chemical, reinforces the experience. It makes you want more of that feeling. So celebrate your writing related wins. Every celebration will feed your writing well positive thoughts and help keep you writing. 

Find (non-food related) ways to reward yourself for the larger wins. (Okay, an occasional food reward is okay, too.) 

Allow yourself time to watch a new movie or to play a game or walk in your favorite park. Make your celebrations proportional, but give it enough time to sink in.

Find Support

Everyone needs support from someone else from time to time. Find support. Anything from one other writer to a writer’s group to a mentor will work. Where do you look for writing support? If you want an IRL person or group, check with your local library or junior college or university. Online groups can be good options. Take an online class and connect with a fellow learner. Check your favorite social media site for fellow writers. 

Give at least as well as you get. Be ready to provide support for your partner or team. Best of all, try giving before you ask for support for yourself. 

Whatever you choose, look for the support that helps you the most. Need an in-depth critique. Look for that ability in your partner. Need specific genre or sensitivity support. Look for someone who has some experience in that area. 

Free Your Writing Life of Imposter Syndrome

Gather the tools you need to fight imposter syndrome. Keep them somewhere you can find them in the throes of self-doubt. Use them when you need to. 

It’s likely Imposter Syndrome will visit you in more than one way. Many of us never completely shed Imposter Syndrome. But you can supercharge your writing life against Imposter Syndrome and keep moving toward your writing goals. 

Have you experienced Imposter Syndrome? How did you free yourself from it?

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Clichés aren’t necessarily bad—they’re just not original.

One of my favorite writing T-shirts says “I avoid clichés like the plague.” But clichés are so ingrained in our day-to-day lives that it’s hard to eliminate them completely from our writing. For me, the more casual the situation, the more often I use them. For example, you’ll see me use them a lot more in blog posts versus my novels.

Clichés are not bad. They’re cultural shorthand to convey an idea.

However, it’s this ease of communication that makes them undesirable in our writing.

We’re writers. We’re supposed to be original. Using something that’s been used "for ages" is taking the lazy way out and making the reader do the work. Even worse, because clichés are so culturally known, readers aren’t surprised by them. How many TV/movie plots have you ever figured out right away because of the clichés used? I’d guess a lot.

But you can make clichés work for you instead of against you.

I had a WIP with a director of security type position and a second-in-command guy. It’s a cliché that both these roles are often filled by a character who’s up to no good—the guy in charge of your security is secretly working against you. Your second-in-command is trying to do you in and take over. No matter what the genre, this role is frequently where the bad guy hides.

Obviously, I didn’t want to make either of these guys a bad guy. Readers would see that coming without even having to look up.

But since I know readers will expect them to be bad guys, it lets me play with those expectations. I can twist the cliché and have my characters behave in ways that could easily be interpreted as helpful or hurtful and let the reader assume the wrong thing. I can play into those expectations and later yank the rug out from under readers when they realize those actions weren’t the actions of a villain.

Take a known cliché and twist it.

Years ago, I read a book called Villains By Necessity by Eve Forward. Forward took the tried-and-true “good vs evil” cliché and turned it on its head. The good guys have won, evil is gone, but it hasn’t turned out exactly as all the fairy tales said it would. The world is unbalanced now, and that’s causing trouble. A group realizes that the world needs a little evil, and to save it, they have to turn into bad guys. The “villains” have to save the world. What a great twist!

My own novel The Shifter developed this way as well. I was playing with various fantasy clichés, trying to find a different angle on my idea. I ended up focusing on healing, and realized that you never saw it used for evil. There were rarely any consequences to it at all. I wondered, “What if healing could be bad? What if it could be harmful?” And thus, the book was born.

If you have a clichéd idea, opening, or character, try looking at how you can make that cliché different.

Can you do the opposite of what’s expected?

Can you make it positive if it’s a negative? Negative if it’s a positive? (As in, if the cliché is always for the good guy can you give it to the bad guy, and vice versa?)

Is there something that hasn’t been done with it already? Can you:

• Change the gender?
• Change the age?
• Change the species?
• Change the genre?
• Change the tone?
• Change the format?

Let’s look at one of the more common clichés: Describing a character by looking in the mirror.

How many times have you heard “Don’t have your character look in a mirror to describe themselves.” It’s good advice, but what if your book absolutely needs to do this?

Then twist the cliché.

First, look at how and why this cliché is typically used:

• It’s the easiest way for a writer to describe their point of view character.
• Studying yourself in the mirror is something we all do.
• It’s easy to get in the descriptive details.

Next, ask yourself why this cliché has to be used:

• What about looking in that mirror is critical to the story?
• Why can’t you describe the character in another way?
• What does looking in the mirror gain you that nothing else can accomplish?

Now, let’s look at my “ways to twist a cliche” list and see what we can come up with:

Can you do the opposite of what’s expected?

You expect to see the person, so what if they have no reflection? What if they remember what they can no longer see? What if they go out of their way to avoid looking into mirrors? What if it’s someone else looking at them as they look into the mirror?

Can you make it positive if it’s a negative?

What if they have something they didn’t have before? Their appearance changed in a way that’s intriguing.

Negative if it’s a positive?

What if they see something they don’t want to see? What if they’re always looking into mirrors because they need to constantly watch behind them? What if they’re waiting for something bad to show up in their reflection?

Naturally, the story will dictate which direction you go with this, but you can already see how a little brainstorming has opened up several ideas.

Unsure if what you’re doing is a cliché or not?

Wander through TV Tropes, one of the most comprehensive cliché databases I’ve ever seen. It covers all the common plots, tricks, and clichés and gives you plenty of examples. It covers books, TV, comics, and movies, so don’t let the name fool you.

Clichés come with expectations. Defy those expectations, and your cliché can become more than cultural short hand.

What clichés do you struggle with? Does your WIP use any? Are they working or not working?

About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

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by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

Today, I want to tell you to get over yourself.

I am in a lot of writers’ groups online and off, with literally tens of thousands of writers in various stages of their journeys. I regularly attend several writers’ conferences, am in a couple of critique groups, I had a weekly stream talking about the business of creativity, I both formally and informally mentor or help writers, you get the idea. I see a lot of writers, especially the statistically more common Beginning Writer variant. And the common issue I see many face is hesitation.

This is not going to be an inspirational post about having the courage to pitch your work. Nope, we’re going way back before that, to the very start. You can’t pitch what you haven’t written.

(Well, you can, actually, and that’s what a book proposal is. But book proposals are primarily for non-fiction and very, very well-established fiction authors. Neil Gaiman can propose an unwritten book; I can’t. So we won’t talk about proposals.)

This hesitation comes out in various ways and sometimes looks quite different, but we’re often just seeing different pips on the same die:

• “I’m getting to the actual writing, I just need to go over my outline once more first”
• “I spent three hours writing and got a few hundred words”
• “NaNoWriMo [or other goal-oriented event] is only for people who don’t actually care about their writing”

Reluctance

What this all boils down to is a reluctance—often unconscious, in my observation—to actually get the story down in real prose.

Before we talk about the several reasons for this, let me deal with the hands which have already shot into the air. This is usually where someone takes a deep breath and launches, “Well, actually, Laura, not everyone works in the same way, and it’s unrealistic and rude to expect them to.” Great point, but irrelevant, and your attempt to deflect and defend won’t work here. I didn’t say anything about everyone needing to work in the same way, I said quite a lot of writers, especially but not limited to novice writers, have trouble getting their story down on a page. So, let’s get back to that.

As I was saying, there are multiple reasons offered for this hesitation—I don’t know how to get started, I don’t like the words that come out, I need to fix the words I’ve already written, and a host more—but these again reduce to a single root cause: fear that my draft will not be good enough.

WELL OF COURSE IT WON’T BE GOOD ENOUGH, FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD, AND WHY WOULD IT? But we’ll get back to that.

There are several popular meme variations on a common “joke” (ha ha ha sob) about a first draft not matching up to the idea or concept. It’s funny because it’s true. When we have an idea, it’s necessarily more vague as a premise than as a 75,000 word manuscript, and it can be glorious in its imprecision. Everything that is blurry is assumed perfect. When we write it down, we have to suddenly get all those details right, and of course it’s not going to be finished to perfection in its first iteration.

Of Course

But a lot of writers miss that “of course.”

When there is a gap (or occasionally a chasm) between expectation and actualization, we get frustrated and disappointed. A lot of writers deal with that frustration and disappointment by just…avoiding it. “If I haven’t written the thing yet, I haven’t yet messed up the thing.” Which is true, as far as it goes, but also what an inefficient (and sad) way to write (and to live).

Now, just pulling that into view is sometimes enough to challenge it. As I said, this is often an unconscious sabotage, and realizing what we’re doing may be enough to disrupt it. But there are also several facts—yes, facts—we can consider to ourselves help get past this.

The other day a friend expressed reluctance to do something with a potentially scary outcome, and I told her that emotions are totally valid, but she should just also ask them to justify their influence. We did the math, and it turned out statistically she had a better chance of being struck by lightning than of the scary outcome. Not saying you can’t ever feel fear, but just ask it to explain itself, okay? So let’s look at this draft reluctance in clear light and rationally.

Mistakes

Let’s start with the silly one: Mistakes, inconsistencies, and ugly sentences in first drafts are not fatal. They’re not even serious problems. They’re barely non-serious problems.

Now I said this was silly, and it is. Most people will roll their eyes and say that of course they know errors in first drafts aren’t fatal, and what a stupid thing to even bring up. But if it’s so silly and so easy to reject, why do so many people let it deny their goals and dreams? Why are they still just 12k into that novel on its third year? Because **it feels fatal.**

Not nailing that concept-to-prose landing, not sticking that transition from glorious idea to compelling story, feels like failure. And as we all know from our character studies, “death” comes in several flavors, including failure, and also including perceptions of self. It’s why we can have a climax with a secret agent trying to keep a chemical from the water supply to save tens of thousands of lives, but also a climax with a middle schooler trying to push a special note to a classmate. We know this in fiction; it’s true for real life, too.

So we let the idea of mistakes become “failure”—even in a first draft. Which is indeed silly. Don’t let fear psych you out of doing what you want to do.

Expectations

And here’s the second fact. First drafts are not just allowed to be bad, they are expected to be bad. That is why they are called FIRST drafts, with the inherent assumption that there will be more to follow.

When you write your first draft—full of errors and continuity problems and hard right turns in characterization because I only just now realized she’s motivated by guilt over accidentally killing her sister or that he has a latex allergy and all that glorious first draft mess—you immediately want to assess your work. And you naturally assess against your reading standards, which are universally NOT first drafts, but are the published books you love. And so you compare your fresh baby draft, barely into the world, to a professional’s fifteenth draft which has additionally undergone one or several professional edits. And then, when they don’t match—AND WHY WOULD THEY?—you feel frustration and disappointment.

So I’m here to say, get over yourself. 😊 Stop asking your first draft to match someone else’s fifteenth draft with a couple rounds of pro editing. You’re not that good—and no one is. I have here two suggested reminders, depending on your personal preferences for self-talk:

1. I guarantee you Brandon Sanderson’s first draft does not look like the finished book you hold in your hands, either. It’s gonna be okay. First drafts exist just to make revision possible.
2. Stop pretending you’re too good for the creative process and your first drafts should of course just naturally be better than everyone else’s fourth drafts, and join the rest of the writing community in hard work.

Progress

Now, here’s one more fact to remember: A first draft is much, much closer to a novel than an idea is. It is far, far easier to revise a first draft into that shiny finished product than it is to turn an idea into a finished product. Even though it may feel like your concept has been battered and destroyed by putting it into an imperfect first draft, it has to get worse before it gets better (kind of like cleaning out that one closet), and the ugly draft is actually so much closer to your goal.

Just. Write. The Thing.

And one more, though I won’t call it a fact because this is just personal experience, though I strongly suspect it could be a more universal experience: The more I consciously allow my first drafts to be awful, the better they are. If I get out of my own way, not micro-managing early attempts, I let the part of my brain with the ideas have better access to the keyboard. I can cite specific incidents where under deadline I said, “I’m just gonna vomit onto this page and I’ll salvage what I can later,” and then what came out was not just better than expected, but better overall. (A couple of those stories is are award winners.)

I know several writers who generally write fairly clean first drafts and need fewer drafts overall. All of them write fairly quickly. That’s a small and highly informal sample, but I don’t think it’s wholly coincidental. It’s not about the technical speed (words per hour), it’s about just getting it down without getting in your own way.

Again, because it’s important: it's not about technical speed, hitting 2500 words an hour or whatever. It's about getting the story down so there's something to revise. You can't edit a blank page.

I’m not saying not to plan or outline. I’m definitely not saying that quality of the finished product doesn’t matter. I’m saying that you’re probably better than you’re allowing yourself to be, and you can choose to approach it differently.

Now go write the thing!

Discussion: Have you found yourself hesitant to write because it wasn’t going as well as you hoped? Do you have any favorite techniques to get around your inner critic?

About Laura

Laura VanArendonk Baugh writes fantasy of many flavors as well as non-fiction. She has summited extinct, dormant, and active volcanoes, but none has yet accepted her sacrifice. She lives in Indiana where she enjoys Dobermans, travel, fair-trade chocolate, and making her imaginary friends fight one another for her own amusement. Find her award-winning work at http://LauraVAB.com.