The Curse of Imposter Syndrome
And why you need to ignore it to do your best work
The other day, I posted on Twitter, “Is there a writer alive who doesn’t suffer from imposter syndrome?” and received a thunder of replies. I didn’t even need to explain what I meant by “imposter syndrome”. It’s firmly planted in the vernacular, and everyone seems to instantly understand (and be familiar) with what it means. It’s that feeling that you’ve pulled a fast one, that you’re faking it, that you aren’t entitled to be treated as a real writer, that other writers are real writers but you aren’t, and that one day you will be found out.
I really shouldn’t have limited the question to writers, I realized after the fact. Imposter syndrome afflicts everyone, especially people in the creative field, although I’ve had friends who have professional degrees who also suffer from it. (A side note: I never, ever want to know if surgeons suffer from imposter syndrome, for obvious reasons, so please, do not tell me that they do.) People doing creative work are probably more vulnerable because there is no benchmark (an educational degree, a license, etc.) that at least gives you the mild comfort of feeling you’re legit. Most of us scribblers and word wrestlers just declared ourselves writers and started writing. No title was conferred upon us; we had to believe ourselves to be writers and…
