If you are a writer (like me) or, actually, any kind of artist trying to get published or displayed or viewed or whatever, do you suffer from the feeling of despair of ever being taken seriously in your art, a phenomenon frequently known as imposter syndrome? Personally, I think the term is a bit misleading because the word imposter suggest that an artist feels he/she’s something else other than being an artist. But what it really means is: do you feel that the art you are trying to make is basically no good, or worthless, or nobody is going to take a look at it, or why-am-I-wasting-my-time-doing-this? That you really are an artist, but your attempts at producing art have come to no good. Do you feel your art has put you on a road to total unproductive, wretched, worthless behavior? Do you feel your art isn’t anywhere nearly as good as the masters of the art, and why-the-hell-am-I-doing-this?
As a writer of fiction, specifically science fiction, I have to read the masters of the genre all the time, the new ones and the older ones, and I’ve learned lot from all that reading. So much of what I’ve learned is quite subjective and has to do not so much with the well-known “rules” of writing which novices learn every day, but with things such as word use, sentence structure, plotting, layout of chapters, sections, and whole novels, and even such prosaic things as adverb use and how to use strong nouns and verbs. I think I’ve progressed in my writing over the twenty years or so that I’ve been doing it, due in large part to all that reading.
Still, within all that reading and learning and writing and rewriting and editing that I’ve had to do to self-publish two novels (and a third coming out in a month or so—stay tuned) I’ve had not a few times when I’ve wondered how well my writing fits within the greater science-fiction community. How do other sci-fi writers feel about what I’ve done? Where do I fit in the genre (my Amazon rating notwithstanding.) Personally, and I may be doing a bit of bragging here, I’ve mostly felt that what I’ve done has been reasonably good. Not Pulitzer Prize good (good heavens), but reasonably good. My first novel, EXPLORER, garnered a couple of second-place finishes in several literary contests, though it was a bust in a number of others. My second novel, TRAVELER, has already gotten an honorable mention in one contest, but I have yet to hear from any of the others. That seems to ameliorate some of the uneasiness of the imposter syndrome, but it isn’t totally gone. I don’t know how any of you reading this feel about your writing (or whatever art you do), but I suspect from what I’ve read and heard on the subject that it’s a real phenomenon that affects others, not just me. I can’t guarantee it will pass, but grabbing a prize or two at least tells you that you’re not a total bust.
Keep pen to paper. Or fingers on keyboard.