Self doubt / imposter syndrome

I have asked more than a few mentees to place a note in their writing space that says either Belief determines reality, or Belief becomes reality. We have to believe to become.

@wulfmoon ... So true Wulf!

From the book, "A change in feeling, is a change in destiny." 

Posted by: @c-a-tedeschi

@wulfmoon ... So true Wulf!

 

From the book, "A change in feeling, is a change in destiny." 

Rejections can gnaw at your belief. There are realities about rejections, and if you can remind yourself about those realities, you can layer some Teflon over your goals and self worth so the disappointment of the rejections will slide off faster and not erode your confidence. Another secret is surrounding yourself with visible positive reinforcement to remind yourself you’ve still got it, and that you are indeed progressing forward toward your goals and dreams. Visualization actualization is a powerful tool, and I know several here have created vision boards toward that end. Another is to surround yourself with friends that believe in you, ready to cheer you on when the chips are down. This Forum can really help in that regard.

Anyone feel like sharing how they hold their head up and keep their belief fortified so they can stay the course?

I do struggle with this. I have my own markers out--my framed best-WotF certificate, a couple of printed stories--to try and help with this. I know that visualization is huge, whether internal or prompted by vision boards. I watched my wife endure significant surgery pain free, and without painkillers, by using visualization. For me, I come and go with it, but there's no doubt that when my internal vision of myself is in a good place, what I do comes easier, and my results are better. (That's true of both my writing and my day job.) But I'm not very good at it, and so my internal vision definitely wavers a lot.

I constantly question my ability, or wonder if I've hit some kind of ceiling of what I can accomplish, or if I don't have the right kind of mind to absorb and learn some of the things that other writers do, and...well, on and on, really. When I hit a low point, I return to visualization, in one form or another. It always helps, and I'd benefit from doing it better, no doubt. Vision boards are something that I should do, and yet every time I think of them, I get stuck in the idea of feeling somehow fraudulent. And that in itself is something I should probably work to shift.

I could ramble on about the positives of rejections themselves, but I think that the visualization is the real focus of this thread--and it's definitely both massive, and something I don't do as well as I could, or should.

There are no imposters. You are exactly the person you exhibit to the world. 

Do what you love, and love what you do, that's your future unfurled.

@doctorjest A lot of writers go through this, Doctor Jest, in greater or lesser degrees. The more validation we get, the easier it becomes to deal with it. Why it’s harder on most newer writers is that they don’t have the typical validations that shore up their confidence—respectable sales and contest wins to point to as signposts that they are advancing up the path. As rejections mount, it can be easy to take it personally and to start believing we don’t have the right stuff. If we believe that, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We could give up.

I can only tell you what helped me. Knowing all aspiring writers go through the heavy rejection phase because they’re still apprenticing really helps. Getting that first sale or publication is empowering, especially in tangible printed form. Getting nice personal rejections from pro editors and posting them to my bulletin board helped. And framing a few of those WotF certificates and hanging them in your office are a great reminder that you’ve earned honors for your writing. Don’t underestimate the power of a mentor or writing partner that believes in you. And if you’re lucky, a soulmate that knows your soul and supports you in putting it on the page is the most empowering confidence builder of all. 

We each must find what works for us to keep the faith alive.

Finally, we have one another in this Forum. Seeing our friends succeed and hearing their words of encouragement can help us to forge ahead in our quest. All the best to you, Rob. I do believe in you. Anyone that can hit Finalist in the world’s largest talent search for speculative fiction writers certainly has what it takes. Don’t forget that. Dave was the best of the best, and he felt your writing was qualified to be published in the anthology.

All the best,

Wulf Moon

These are a couple of images I've found helpful and motivational when it comes to dealing with things like imposter syndrome and perceived skill level. (Please note: I did not make these. They came across my timeline on Twitter at some point in the nebulous past, and I don't know who originally created them. I just know that they're awesome.)

My basic thoughts regarding imposter syndrome go something like this: Creatives struggle with imposter syndrome because we tend to see other creatives' results rather than the process that got them there. It's easy to assume that all stories burst out of a writer's head fully formed and sell on their first submission, but that's rarely what happens.

Now, to be fair, I have had something similar to that happen to me with a short story once. ONCE. Once out of the twenty-four short stories I've penned in the last six and a half years. Most of my stories took multiple submissions to sell; I think my current record for most submissions before acceptance is sixteen, and I'm sure it will be higher at some point. Many of those were agonized over for weeks or months--sometimes even years, if I got sufficiently stuck during the drafting process--before I decided they were ready to send out. (I'm not counting flash in these assessments, but I will note that while flash is a lot easier to finish in one sitting, that doesn't mean it's any easier to sell. I racked up a lot of R's on flash fiction over the last few months because I haven't had time to focus on anything longer and they've been a good way to keep my head in the game.)

...Okay, I got a little sidetracked there, but my point is that if all you see is the end result, rather than the process, it's easy to romanticize other writers and assume they know what they're doing better than we do. But, really, everyone has a learning curve, and just because some people are at different places on that curve than others doesn't mean they don't struggle with things. Even people who have figured out a solid process and churn out publishable work on the regular still struggle with this kind of thing.

Wanting to belong is a natural thing. Fearing one doesn't belong is also a natural thing. In the end, how this struggle shakes out is different for every individual person. There's certainly an external component to belonging (which is basically the acceptance of peers), but the internal component (whether or not one feels like one is accepted) is just as significant. I've known people who have (or portray) such a strong sense of self-identity that others' opinions aren't really a factor. I've also known people who are so convinced that they don't belong in a space that they refuse to believe the signs of acceptance their peers are giving them. Personally, I think things work best when there's a balance of sorts--knowing oneself is good, but it's also important to listen to peer feedback, because that can help to keep one from going off the rails.

And how do you know who your peers are? That's a question each person has to answer for themselves, but I try to seek out people who are both kind and honest. I want to know if I'm making a misstep so that I can correct it, and I appreciate being supported when I'm struggling. A solid peer group will help with both.

...Am I getting distracted again? I'm getting distracted again. The ADHD is strong with me today.

TLDR: Imposter syndrome is the devil and you should kick the devil in the teeth. Or something. Write on!

That second chart (ability vs time) reminds me of a development hierarchy I learned about in college once. Where I learned it, I can't recall. (Sidenote: which also reminds me of something I heard from my high school French teacher: "An education is what remains after you've forgotten everything you learned in school." A wise woman, she was.)

But I also digress...back to the hierarchy. Regarding the development process, the stages of learning go something like this:

1. I don't know what I don't know (blissfully ignorant)
2. I know what I know (self-aware)
3. I know what I don't know (humility)
4. I don't know what I know (untapped potential)

At a certain point in our development, we become painfully aware of what our weaknesses are, and that's when we start to get frustrated, especially when we compare ourselves and our own development against someone else's progress. That last point — step 4 — was hard for me to wrap my head around. But then the professor gave the example of getting in your car and driving somewhere, then arriving and having no memory of how you actually got there. Or in our case, sitting down to write and getting so wrapped up in the story that two hours go by and we've cranked out 4,000 words and we wonder, "Where the heck did all THAT come from?" Sometimes we just turn ourselves over to the process and go into auto-pilot mode. We are capable of so much more than we think we can accomplish if we can just get out of our own way and let it happen.

Now that I look back on all this, I'm not sure if any of it is helpful or if it even makes any sense. But doggone it I wrote all those words and I'm not about to delete any of them now! So hopefully this helps...? *shrugs*

@disgruntledpeony I love this. Both insightful and immensely helping to see written. Imposter syndrome is definitely the devil. Every time I hit finalist I feel this frenzy to improve so that I might actually feel good enough to have won if I win ?

Posted by: @disgruntledpeony

Now, to be fair, I have had something similar to that happen to me with a short story once. ONCE. Once out of the twenty-four short stories I've penned in the last six and a half years. Most of my stories took multiple submissions to sell; I think my current record for most submissions before acceptance is sixteen, and I'm sure it will be higher at some point. Many of those were agonized over for weeks or months--sometimes even years, if I got sufficiently stuck during the drafting process--before I decided they were ready to send out. (I'm not counting flash in these assessments, but I will note that while flash is a lot easier to finish in one sitting, that doesn't mean it's any easier to sell. I racked up a lot of R's on flash fiction over the last few months because I haven't had time to focus on anything longer and they've been a good way to keep my head in the game.)

[...]

TLDR: Imposter syndrome is the devil and you should kick the devil in the teeth. Or something. Write on!

I think this is actually an interesting insight into numbers, and what they may mean for different writers. I wrote, and submitted, a lot at one time--and in part, that was a grind for feedback. I didn't have a writer's group, my only writer friends were largely inactive, and I relied a lot on a combination of that artistic curve improving my ability to read my own work and constructive feedback from some markets to figure out both what I was doing wrong, and also what I was doing right.

(Fortunately, feedback did suggest there was some of both.)

But this also means that I didn't do the agonizing thing so much. If anything, I have the opposite problem, an impulsiveness to send out a story very quickly. Because of that, if you count my most recent sales (three sales for two stories), they accumulated thirty and twenty-six rejections respectively before finding themselves a home. There's something to be said for being bloody-minded where submissions are concerned.

But also, both because I was impulsive and because I was relying so heavily on feedback to help me improve, the stories that got published are not entirely the same stories that accumulated a good number those rejections (and in the case of the best sale, the PodCastle reprint, I have to thank the market that picked that story up first, because they recommended a wonderful edit that reduced the story length by about ten percent, and improved both the opening and the overall pacing. They saw through to the story underneath, and then PodCastle received that improved, edited version for consideration.)

This is a habit I have been trying to shed, because it carries one big and glaringly obvious problem--if I don't get the story into really good shape before it actually goes through these jumps, then what tends to happen is that the story gets improved or tightened through feedback after it's first been rejected by the markets I would prefer to have accepted it. The end result is that I end up with a stack of improved stories, but they no longer have anywhere to go, save when intermittent or good new markets open up.

Still, I toughened up mentally through the rejections I got, which used to depress me and stall my writing. I learned a lot from the feedback, too, and I've been able to see the pattern of those rejections shift, with more personal rejections from better markets, more of the please-send-more form types, and so on. So maybe it wasn't the ideal path, but it at least was a path, and it carried me to here. Maybe from here, I can find a better one.

Anyway, that first imposter syndrome picture is a near-perfect depiction of my mental perception, both creatively and professionally. I'm constantly surprised when I catch myself realizing that people are treating me with respect and asking my opinion about things, because I always feel like I shouldn't be the person to ask about any of it.

Kick the devil in the teeth seems like sound advice for almost all circumstances...

Posted by: @doctorjest

 

If anything, I have the opposite problem, an impulsiveness to send out a story very quickly. Because of that, if you count my most recent sales (three sales for two stories), they accumulated thirty and twenty-six rejections respectively before finding themselves a home. There's something to be said for being bloody-minded where submissions are concerned.

But also, both because I was impulsive and because I was relying so heavily on feedback to help me improve, the stories that got published are not entirely the same stories that accumulated a good number those rejections (and in the case of the best sale, the PodCastle reprint, I have to thank the market that picked that story up first, because they recommended a wonderful edit that reduced the story length by about ten percent, and improved both the opening and the overall pacing. They saw through to the story underneath, and then PodCastle received that improved, edited version for consideration.)

This is a habit I have been trying to shed, because it carries one big and glaringly obvious problem--if I don't get the story into really good shape before it actually goes through these jumps, then what tends to happen is that the story gets improved or tightened through feedback after it's first been rejected by the markets I would prefer to have accepted it. The end result is that I end up with a stack of improved stories, but they no longer have anywhere to go, save when intermittent or good new markets open up.

I've absolutely done all of this, too (which you'd think wouldn't happen, what with the agonizing and all, but my skills have improved a lot over the years and a lot of my earlier stories were very rough despite the agonizing). I have this habit of looking over a story I've racked up about ten R's on since I finished it and going, "Oh! No wonder it was getting rejected--this needs work." And then I edit it before sending it back out.

Sometimes the work helps the story sell! Sometimes it doesn't. But either way, I tend to feel better knowing that I made the necessary improvements. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who goes through this kind of thing--it's definitely hard when you revise a story and then have to wait six months in hopes of a fresh venue.  

I started sending out stories, but I see myself imposter hobbiest.

Times are hard, but they should get better soon. 

Ever since we all went into quarantine two years ago, we've all been plastered to our phones and electronics; we have all been constantly spending mindless hours scrolling and looking for something that we think is there just to fulfill our boredom. This has affected not only me but a few friends of mine. 

Being a teenager in our modern world is difficult and questionable, much more if you're a girl. 

I spent most of my quarantine on youtube and TikTok like the majority of the world. My friends did the same, and they still do. The one thing I noticed that my friends and I have in common is how insecure we've gotten throughout our childhood years. I remember the days when I didn't pay much attention to see if the outfit I was wearing would attract the guy I liked. I didn't pay attention to how skinny I was or how much I was eating every day. 

And yet, we come to this conclusion where I now think that. It's mostly because of the internet. There are "TikTok Influencers" that do dances and while you're watching you start to realize, wow, they have, like, perfect bodies. They wear makeup and they look gorgeous. You start to see the trends with clothing and you want those brands so that people at school will be like: "Hey, she's wearing _______! Didn't Addison Rae just make that brand her whole life?"

This is something that affects a lot of people (especially to all my girls out there reading this). It affects me. It affects my best friend, who isn't happy with her body. And even when I tell her that she's beautiful just the way she is, she denies it and eats less and less every day. 

I know that the passage I'm going within this post is definitely clueless and messy, and I do apologize for that, lol. But, to everyone out there who can relate to this (females, males, unidentified), I want you to know that you're perfect the way you are. There's no need to change a single thing without the right intentions. Don't change yourself for others, but instead change yourself for what YOU want to be. Make yourself feel comfortable in your own skin. 

As Coco Chanel once said, "Beauty begins the moment you decided to be yourself."

Even if that takes time, it's worth it. And I can't wait to learn that lesson, too. 

<3 Strawberry Frog

@strawberry-frog

It is said that a human being is 3 things. What they think of themselves. What others think of them. And what they truly are.

It's helpful to unplug and get outside, take a nature hike. For me it fills the tank with the creative juice.  

@strawberry-frog Being your true self and representing it in your writing and style is where the term Voice comes from. I believe it’s the most valuable commodity we have as writers. No one can duplicate it, because you are uniquely you. When you can master your craft and can consistently thread your Voice into your work, you will not only get published, you’ll gain a dedicated audience that will crave what you write, because no one else can deliver what you write. 

@morgan I definitely like #4. I'm fascinated by it, in fact. To use a video game as an example, when I played World of Warcraft (far too much) I was always struggling, fighting things my level or above to advance. Then I went back into a dungeon ten levels lower than me and wrecked the place. I was like, huh, guess I've improved.

I think of it now with working out. I'm always up against my max weights. When I look at my sheets from two years ago, it's all 20 20 25 20. Last year is 25 25 30 25. Now I've got 30 30 35 30 (as examples). And yet, it feels exactly the same. The struggle is the same. So for fun I went back and duplicated the first few sets from two years ago, and like an old dungeon, found the exercise (literally) trivial. I was tossing those 20's around like nobody's business.

How this relates to writing, for me anyway, is this: Draft count.

The story I subbed yesterday was started and finished in March. Now, I absolutely don't know the result. Could be a straight R. But just feeling confident enough to submit it was a big morale booster. Years back I would routinely skip quarters while working on one story. Six months was about right to pound story metal between hammer and anvil. I just figured that's who I was as a writer. But... I'm speeding up. One month is probably my record. Certainly for non-flash.

Wulf was so sped up he got his in a day.

At her peak, my ol' friend Jennifer Campbell-Hicks - word one to finished draft to finalist - in one day. Sadly, she didn't win, but could have, and the story would have been the same. #4 above.

The only way to get there is the reps (and enjoying the process). Mentally I struggle with the struggle, like, will this ever get easier? Nope. Not if I want to grow. Not if I want to push myself. I want 35 35 40 35. I want a WotF Win. I want a novel on an editor's desk.

So, as far as self-doubt is concerned, if you're just starting out, enjoy the reps. If you're mid-path and not finding success, remember that lower level dungeon is always there, waiting to show how far you've come. The 20s are there. And the six months per story is there. And if you ask yourself why haven't I made it yet? (not self-actualizing at all here, cough cough) then remember the future, the higher weights, the better/faster first drafts are ahead, and to keep going.

@axeminister 

Well that makes me feel better, Dustin, because I'm pretty much still in the "one story every six months" club. Needless to say, I didn't make it in for Q2, but Q3 is definitely do-able.

I'm at a weird point in my writing life. Sitting in my office for countless hours is sort of boring.  

Martin writes while driving, Kevin J writes while hiking, I want to learn to compose my next masterpiece while I'm either golfing or fishing.

It's possible, I'm sure I can figure out how to do it.  

Posted by: @morgan-broadhead

@axeminister 

Well that makes me feel better, Dustin, because I'm pretty much still in the "one story every six months" club. Needless to say, I didn't make it in for Q2, but Q3 is definitely do-able.

I was there at one point, myself. At this point, I can finish individual stories much more quickly than I used to (managed to get a complete first draft for the 24-hour story and finished my first round of edits on it earlier this week), but I often still need significant downtime between projects (anywhere from a week to a month--sometimes longer). I've found that the amount of free time one has to spend on writing and the general stress level of one's non-writing life are both contributors to how quickly a story can get finished. (Also, there's nothing wrong with editing and resubbing older stories to WotF if you know you don't have the time to write a new one but you still want to have a story in every quarter. Did that a few quarters, myself!)