In a post on Writer Unboxed, Julie Carrick Dalton talks about overcoming imposter syndrome. “Do you walk into a room full of writers and feel like you deserve to take up space in the publishing world?” she asks. “Or do fear being unmasked as an imposter?”
Writers often swing from inspirational self-confidence to dizzying self-doubt. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but finding balance is important. “I believe it’s healthy to temper confidence with a bit of self-doubt, and I believe toxic self-doubt can be righted by remembering your true, honest accomplishments, even if they are small,” Dalton says. “I’m still trying to figure out how to balance the confident fake-it-til-you-make-it mindset and imposter syndrome, but I’ve learned a few strategies that help me navigate the highs and lows.”
When she started writing, Dalton doubted the publishing world would take her seriously, but instead of surrendering, she began working on her writing resume one line at a time. “As I continued working on my novel manuscript, I entered contests,” she explains. “Flash fiction, short stories, novel excerpts. So many contests. Most of them led to disappointment, but I won several. I entered the wins into my scant author bio. Award-winning writer.”
She submitted stories to literary journals and added credits to her bio. She wrote essays and book reviews for blogs and added blogger and book reviewer to her resume. She led a few writing workshops and added workshop leader. “None of these minor successes involved platforms like Pulitzer or Ploughshares or The New York Times, but they were legitimate, hard-fought wins, and I was proud of them,” she writes. “After a few years, the bio paragraph in my query letter began to feel respectable.”
The fake-it-til-you-make-it attitude helped Dalton continue to make progress in her career. “Building on my thin credentials, I started pitching to larger publications and placed some essays and book reviews on national platforms,” she says. “Relying on credentials and references from the workshops I had volunteered to teach, I began pitching classes to larger national conferences that I wasn’t sure I was qualified to apply for.” By the time she finished her first novel, she has a decent author’s bio to back it up.
Even with her fourth novel under contract, Dalton still experiences rejections and self-doubt, but also successes.
“If you struggle with imposter syndrome (who doesn’t?) I recommend trying to embrace the fake-it-til-you-make-it posture for a while,” she says. “Take an objective look at things you have accomplished, including the tiny things. Own them. Celebrate the wins. How can you build on them? Can you leverage a small opportunity into a bigger one? And leverage that opportunity into an even larger one?” In time, you’ll learn to embrace your confident writer persona and forget that the imposter ever existed.
