Photo credit: Flickr: Diana
Originally appeared on Medium, March 2018
A couple of weeks ago, someone referred to me as a professional writer. My first reaction (in my head) was to back away with my hands up, going, “Whoa, whoa. Let’s not get carried away here.”
My second reaction? To stop writing.
For almost two weeks, I’ve hardly written a word; I’ve even avoided my nightly ritual with my gratitude journal. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to say; I’ve just been paralyzed.
I honestly had never believed imposter syndrome was a real thing, but now, it’s hitting me HARD.
Who am I to be called a writer? Nayyira Waheed. Paulo Coelho. Annie Dillard. Now THEY’RE writers, the kind of writers whose souls dance off the page, whose words have the power to make cynics believe in the beauty of life again. Compared to them, I’m a hack.
I had a similar reaction a month ago, when a high school classmate posted this brilliantly real look into her transition from sales to writing. Here she was, painstakingly positioning herself to launch a successful career. My ‘how I became a writer’ story went like this:
Graduate college.
Realize I need a job.
Think, “Welp, I like words. I guess I’ll try that.”
The end.
So here I am, more than a decade into my career as an editor and writer, about to publish chapters in two phenomenal books — and feeling more like a fraud than I ever have before in my life. What’s with that?
The truth is, I'm afraid. All of a sudden, it feels like I have skin in the fight. By accepting this label, by taking on the mantle of "writer", I'm making myself more vulnerable than I've ever been. I'm sending tiny little pieces of my soul out into the world, unarmored, for people to take or leave as they will. My heart is pounding out of my chest just typing that.
By truly embracing the fact that I am a writer, I’m raising the stakes, and I could certainly lose. There are times when my writing is going to fall flat, when it’s going to flat-out suck. There are people who aren’t going to like my style or what I have to say. Exposing myself like this raises the specter of my two biggest fears: not being good enough and people not liking me. Being a writer is personal growth on steroids.
Back in high school, I used to think that by the time I was in my 30s, I would totally have my shit together. Now I look back at that girl and think, “Oh, honey.” So I'm comforting myself with the thought that maybe I'm not alone in this. Maybe it's not just me. Maybe we all face the day with a certain amount of, "What the hell am I doing here?" Maybe everyone feels like a fraud on some level, and we're all just doing our best to play the part.
I don’t know how or when I’ll move past this feeling. But I do know that not writing is no longer an option. By not writing, I’m betraying the core of who I am, and that’s not something I’m willing to do ever again. So I’ll continue to send out those tiny word ambassadors to speak to the world, and just hope for the day when I can say it with faith instead of fear:
I am a writer.