Navigating Imposter Syndrome as a Writer

Imposter syndrome creeps into any profession or way of life, but I think writers are particularly vulnerable to it. Writing is isolating, and isolation can play with your mind. We spend a lot of time alone, inside our own heads, attempting to translate thoughts and imaginary worlds into words that make sense to other people. Spend enough time in your own brain, and it’s easy to feel like you’re going insane.

Writing is also incredibly subjective. You can write something you’re super proud of and have someone hate it. You can write something you think is mediocre and have someone tell you it changed their life. You can get published, get paid, write a book, win an award, and still find yourself staring at a blank document wondering whether you’ve somehow fooled everyone.

That uncertainty can be crippling if you let it. But after spending much of my life writing, I’ve realized that feeling like an imposter doesn’t mean you are one. It’s all about maintaining the mind and how it functions.

Here are five things that have helped me navigate my own scrambled head. 

1. Keep Track of Your Wins

Writers are very good at remembering rejection: the pitch that went unanswered. The story that didn’t get accepted. The editor who didn’t like the idea. The paragraph you spent three hours working on before eventually deleting the entire thing.

Our wins somehow have a much shorter shelf life. To combat this, keep them close. Save the email from someone who loved your work. Screenshot the nice comment. Keep a running list of publications, finished projects, milestones, or moments you felt genuinely proud of something you wrote.

Also, your wins don’t have to involve somebody else choosing you. Finishing a chapter is a win. Solving a plot problem you’ve been wrestling with for weeks is a win. Writing something more honestly than you would have been capable of five years ago is a win.

Imposter syndrome is very good at rewriting history, so keep the receipts.

2. Stop Comparing Your Draft to Someone Else’s Finished Product

This one is especially brutal now that we have constant access to other writers. You can open Instagram and see someone announcing their book deal. Go on LinkedIn and someone just landed their dream byline. Open the book on your nightstand and there’s a sentence so good you start to consider throwing your laptop into the ocean. 

Meanwhile, you’re on draft four trying to figure out why and how your main character has two different birthdays. But you’re comparing completely different stages of the process.

You’re seeing the author’s published book, not their terrible first draft. The book deal announcement, not the years of rejection. The gorgeous paragraph, not the seven versions the writer deleted before getting there.

Let other writers inspire you, challenge you, even make you a little jealous sometimes. We’re human. Just don’t use somebody else’s finished product as evidence that you shouldn’t be creating yours.

3. Let Yourself Be Bad at It

Sometimes I think imposter syndrome is less about believing we’re frauds and more about believing we should already know how to do everything. But every new project asks something different of you, and that’s part of your growth. 

Maybe you know how to write articles but have never written a novel. Maybe you’ve written three novels but suddenly decided to try poetry. Maybe you’re great at dialogue and absolutely terrible at endings.

There’s something incredibly freeing about admitting that you don’t know what you’re doing yet. Write the bad version. Try the structure that might not work. Create the character you don’t totally understand. Let yourself produce something embarrassing.

4. Get Out of Your Head

Writing requires solitude. Writers do not. There’s a difference!

When you spend too much time alone with your work, your thoughts can start sounding suspiciously like facts.

This book is terrible.

Everyone else understands what they’re doing.

I have nothing original to say.

Then, you talk to another writer and find out they spent their entire morning moving the same paragraph around and are convinced their manuscript is a disaster.

Having other writers in your life reminds you that uncertainty is part of the process, not evidence that you don’t belong in it. Find people you trust. Trade work. Go to readings. Join a writing group. Talk about the parts of writing that aren't polished enough for an author bio.

5. Lean Into It

There’s a reason you’re questioning whether your writing is good enough: you care.

You have taste and standards. You can see the distance between what you’ve created and what you’re trying to create. That distance can feel awful, but it can also be useful.

A little self-doubt keeps you curious. It makes you reread the sentence and revise. It sends you toward writers who are better than you and subjects you don’t fully understand yet, and it keeps you from assuming everything that comes out of your brain is automatically genius.

When that little voice shows up asking, Who the hell do you think you are to write this?, you don't necessarily have to fight it.

Instead, ask it a better question: Why not me?

Then get back to work.

You Don’t Have to Feel Like a Writer to Be One

Writing asks you to create something that doesn't exist yet and believe, at least temporarily, that it deserves to. That requires a certain amount of audacity.

So doubt yourself. Question the sentence. Delete half the chapter. Have your private existential crisis. Then write the next one anyway.