We all have negative voices in our heads. What they say varies from person to person. In people who are depressed, or anxious, or bipolar, these unwanted thoughts can become part of a downward spiral that drains the joy from everything, including writing.

If you are wondering why you can’t write, which you used to love, and also find yourself uninterested in anything, except sleep, you may need more than writing advice.

Here are a few links:

This is the ADAA, thats the American Depression and Anxiety Association, this is a ‘find treatment’ link.

Psychology Today Index of therapists (My therapist recommended this site.)

If you are a person of faith, be careful about getting treatment for depression based solely on that. Here are some things to look out for. (this link is to a Christian site that might help you figure out what to avoid. In general, I’d say look for someone secular, but that’s me.)

Okay, now that you know you aren’t clinically depressed, you’ll find that your automatic internal voice still says things you know aren’t true about your writing…thing. Career. Avocation. Hobby. Calling. Reason for living. Whatever you call it.

You can talk back to those voices, challenging them with more rational statements, that you will find that you will start believing over time, if you are like most people. Why does this work?

Because brains are stupid. Seriously. This shit sounds so dumb. But it works.

I am not a therapist and this is not therapy, but this practice can work help you shut off the useless self talk.

Thirteen Things I Focus on Now.

1. My writing isn’t me. It is a thing I make, that I can start or stop making and still be me. I can change how I make it and what it is about, and still be me.
2. My publications don’t create my value as a human being. I am the same person whether I ever publish another word or not.
3. Self-directed work isn’t easy. When I choose to do this I exhibit strength of character, because I have no sure knowledge of any external reward. I have done a lot of this work. I am strong. I can keep doing it as long as I find it meaningful. I never have to stop. And I don’t have to continue if it makes me miserable.
4. Other people write more than me. That is okay. That does not diminish my value.
5. Being upset about making money with fiction is unproductive. I may one day make more money with my fiction. I may not. My worth as a human being remains unchanged.
6. I have no control over what happens to a given piece of finished writing, beyond submitting it or publishing it myself and doing standard due diligence. I can’t make others read it, understand it, nominate it, love it, remember it. Once published my piece of writing has a life of its own.
7. If I want to be an indy, I will have to learn a lot about marketing. And keep learning, because indy changes constantly.
8. Every individual rejection or disappointing indy launch is only one data point. Any individual rejection could be pure noise. In some cases, dozens or hundreds of rejections may turn out to be noise. My strategy must look at trends and large amounts of data and not be paralyzed by individual events.
9. The fastest way to collect more data is to finish and submit  or publish more work.
10. Submitting work that isn’t as good as I can make it in a reasonable time frame isn’t a winning strategy. I must find a balance between speed and quality I can live with.
11. Books that break and mix genres and defy norms and reader expectations can be successful, but this doesn’t happen often. When it does, it’s magical. This is how new genres are born. But it’s an uphill battle.
12. Writing what you love is a good way to find energy, but…
13. Other people may not love what I love. This doesn’t diminish them or me. Not all writing is for all people.

If you have self-esteem issues, writing about imposter’s syndrome is oxy-moronic because it presumes one has accomplished something in the first place. Complaining about it is humble bragging about not taking your own awesomeness seriously. And now you’re begging for sympathy from many who would kill for the rewards you’ve reaped.

It’s hard not to translate this as, ‘please compliment me now.’ And it’s hard for people desperate for their first success to empathize with your inability to feel yours.

But every sale, every market broken into, creates this brief period of relief from imposter syndrome, and it’s how you know you suffer from it. For a few hours or days you feel like a ‘real writer.’ And then the damn imposter thing rushes back in like the tide.

Then… absurdly there’s also survivor’s guilt.

Folks newly validated by the tiny handful of professional short fiction editors desperately what that the validation to be meaningful; at the same time, to embrace it wholeheartedly is to embrace a system that is making about 90% of their writing friends temporarily frustrated, intermittently sad, or consistently miserable.

Here’s a buncha bullets, things to think about, as you wrestle with these two feelings. Here are things to tell the folks not yet at the stage to feel like an imposter. Tell them these things as you turn away from your guilt.

• Your good story is wrong for the market. I have sold a ton of stories to Asimov’s, and still get rejected there. I still write stories she knows aren’t for her readership. How does she know? She gets letters. Responses. Reader polls. She knows her readership better than me. The solution to this is to keep reading the market, if you enjoy it and want to be there. If you don’t, you have nothing to feel bad about. I’ll say it again, read the market. One more time… read the market.
• The market bought six stories just like yours last week. Your stories can be triggered by current events, the way you interpret the event metaphorically is influenced by genre. If we wanna say our work is 30% the moment, 30% genre conventions, and 40% magic secret sauce, you are creating stuff with a 60% overlap with everyone else. A topic, a theme warrants a certain number of stories per issue and no more. Editors may be stocked up.
• You haven’t broken in yet. (This is the hardest to hear.) Magazine editors are always looking for authors because there isn’t much money in shorts so many of their writers move on to novels. But making a living as a novelist is damn hard, and writers can work shorts into busy day job schedules, so lots of people just keep churning out shorts. Editors end up with stables of people whose work they like, who the readership likes, so buying their stuff makes a lot of sense. The reality is, you are competing with hundreds of people for a very small number of ‘new to the magazine’ writer slots.

So. Confront your survivor’s guilt, by helping your fellow writers to act on and believe these bullets! Get them to read the markets they want to be in (especially if you’re publishing there!) Nag them. If they realize their work doesn’t fit? They can stop torturing themselves! Find other markets, or write novels, or indypub or write something different.

The other two bullets can be defeated by brute force. It’s a numbers game, and some are luckier than others, but eventually, you break in, and then, the system is tilted a bit toward you. So. Write more. Submit more. Support your workshop friends to do these last two things, as long as they are doing the first.

The two feelings, imposter’s syndrome and survivor’s guilt are at odds with each other, represent different distortions you must address to prevent them from robbing the joy from your writing life. Having both at once is a sign that both are distorted–they are mutually contradictory.

You aren’t an imposter if your survival is meaningful, non random. There are no lottery winners with imposter’s syndrome. You bought the ticket. You were lucky. That’s all winning a lottery is.

If you want to think your publication is random, you won the lottery, if you want to feel guilty for your success, fine, you can do that, but if you also get imposter’s syndrome, then obviously your brain is fucking with you.

Your happiness really has nothing to do with how much or little you publish, or the fairness or unfairness of publishing. In any possible permutation of success or failure you can feel any number of difficult and negative, and baseless emotions.

Rejection is frustrating, but it in itself doesn’t make you unhappy. You do that to yourself, with your expectations. Success feels good, fleetingly, but you can suck the joy out of that too, with imposter’s syndrome and survivor’s guilt. You are doing that to yourself as well.

I know it sounds stupid, but you have to seek out rational responses to these feelings and study them until you believe them, honor them, remember them, repeat them, challenge your internal voices with them in a litany that eventually diminishes them.

Here’s a link to the different kinds of Imposter Syndrome; identify which type you are and learn how to combat the negative messages you are giving yourself based on your own craziness.

But for me, it’s about paying it forward; helping your fellow travelers, for me, is how I stop worrying about my own Imposter thing, which is why I lay this out here. Your mileage may vary.

To write enough, given your own talents and deficits, to become a successful writer, you must protect your head. Don’t suck it up. Don’t tough it out. Confront this shit. I quit fiction for eighteen fucking years. I’m the expert on how not to think about these things. and if all this seems silly to you, if nothing I have written here connects to the way you think, dear God, count yourself lucky.

Leave a comment below, you healthy person you, and I’ll subscribe to your newsletter!

If you found this essay inspirational, interesting, amusing, whatever, join my mailing list. I mean, if you want to. I can’t make you. But I’m asking. Because you read this, and that means I sorta love you. Um. Okay, this got awkward. Boundaries! This is the link to my mail chimp page.

When I was working on my psych degree at Syracuse University a long damn time ago, my abnormal psych professor told us about the diathesis-stress model of mental illness in the then-new DSMIII, diagnostic and statistical manual.

Basically, diathesis-stress posits some innate inner quality that predisposes you for some mental illness, but stress is what triggers the illness. Common sense, but if you read the link above, you see that once you pile enough observation on top of common sense you’ll reach non-intuitive insights.

Stress can be bad things happening to you. Stress can also be brought on by purely voluntary attempts at doing hard and traumatic things. Imagine a firefighter, who has chosen her profession, but who must, every day, gear up and send herself into the fire. Let’s say she’s never injured, physically. Oh, but she sees some shit. And she knows… she knows what might happen.

That’s stress.

Now, I don’t want to overstate this… but getting published and making money as a writer, any kind of writer, is hard. Very hard. Super duper hard. It’s stressful.

Writing can be as stressful a thing as the depth of your passion for it.

The more you want it, the harder you push, the more stress you experience. God I know this is simple, but I’m only getting this thirty years in, so indulge me.

The harder you push, the greater the stress.

I was in a crisis, when I went to Clarion twenty years ago, because I wasn’t getting the reception I wanted for a group of stories. Whether or not I eventually published these stories professionally isn’t the issue. (Brag. I did.) The thing is, I had let my identity as a writer slip past my recognition as a writer and I existed in a world of pain and cognitive dissonance. I became embittered.

One of my instructors confessed that she had only considered writing as a career as the world nodded her on, with publication and awards. She hadn’t gotten out ahead of herself the way I had. This of course, made me feel much worse.

Deep in CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, I hit on an idea that is again, commonplace, but which I have internally sneered at. The idea that your self esteem is, or should be, contingent on nothing.

You see this in memes, about your self worth not being dependent on something. I always rolled my eyes at these memes. So. Hitler should have self-esteem? Me when I am doing nothing should experience self esteem? What a sociopathic joke.

So here’s the thing, and it knits together Christianity, Buddhism and CBT.

If you tie your self-esteem to anything, work or family or friends the state of the world, you are setting yourself up for disaster. If your work is the source of your self-esteem, then you will suffer, because no matter where you go, you’re failing to be the person the next rung up the ladder. For me this has meant, so far:

1. I hate myself because I never finish anything.
2. I hate myself because what I finish is crap.
3. I hate myself because the thing I thought was good was called crap by my whole workshop.
4. I hate myself because this thing I wrote was hated by that one guy in the workshop who hates everything. Because none of  us are publishing much, I think he is right.
5. I hate myself because something that my workshop liked was called crap by a pro.
6. I hate myself because the thing a pro agreed was good was rejected by an editor.
7. I hate myself because something that me, my workshop, and my pro friend, all agreed was good, was rejected by all the editors we collectively care about.
8. I hate myself because even though I publish 10% of what I finish and submit, it takes years to find places to publish stories, and I don’t make much money doing this, and only selling 10% means I make, literally, a tenth of a cent per hour. (see how the goalposts moved suddenly?)
9. I hate myself because my published work–I now sell half of what I write–is never nominated for anything or anthologized or honorably mentioned in the back of the one big antho that everybody has read forever.
10. I hate myself because now that I get mentioned in the back I never get inside. Oh, I did get into one best of. But not that other one that’s older.
11. I hate myself because people who started publishing when I did now have successful novels and TV options, and I didn’t write a novel when they did. They did it. Why didn’t I?

So this is how far I got in this; at every step presume that I have achieved every goal beneath it.

Let’s talk about how this relates to Terry Pratchett. Here’s his Wikipedia brag paragraph.

Pratchett, with more than 85 million books sold worldwide in 37 languages,^[4][5] was the UK’s best-selling author of the 1990s.^[6][7] He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and was knighted for services to literature in the 2009 New Year Honours.^[8][9] In 2001 he won the annual Carnegie Medal for The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, the first Discworld book marketed for children.^[10][11] He received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2010.^[12]

Now, let’s talk about Terry in this t-shirt.

The text reads, Tolkien’s Dead, J.K Rowling said no. Phillip Pullman couldn’t make it. Hi, I’m Terry Pratchett. 

Look at the bio. Then look at the self-deprecating t-shirt. I’m not saying that Pratchett was consumed with self loathing. I am saying that if you make your self worth, your happiness, contingent on ANYTHING WRITING RELATED you will live in a world of pain. I have lived in a world of pain, off and on, in every creative endeavor, and I have spent my most of my life on creative endeavors, artistic, literary, hackery, entrepreneurial.

Talk to me, read me, and I’ll urge you to keep writing; I’ll share inspiration and stories of eventual ‘success’ (there! I’m doing it!) but you have to know that success never makes you happy. Remember Curt Cobain? And a billion other beloved suicidal geniuses?

My clarion instructor told me, that in the end, the world’s opinion on your work is only a greek chorus. And that is exactly what it should be. It’s okay for your goal to be becoming a great writer, or becoming a critically acclaimed author, or becoming a popular author, or becoming all three at once, even thought that almost never happens, just read the goddamn shirt, goals are okay, but if you are telling me that your happiness, or worse, your continued existence on this planet is contingent on some specific success in some to you reasonable time frame, I need to direct you to seek solace elsewhere.

I would never say ‘seek professional help’ because nothing makes anyone avoid professionals as much as this suggestion, but I’ll tell you that I did seek professional help and it got me out of this bind. Several times in my life.

We can support each other as writers, and accidentally enable this untenable thing, this mentality, as a family member might kindly enable a substance addiction.

So, if a pro tells me that every voice outside of the one in my head is a kind of greek chorus, I am allowed to define success however I want. Wait.

I am allowed to define my success however I want. I don’t need a professional’s opinion.

Oh, and you know why Christianity, and CBT, and Buddhism all have this idea, that the chattering nattering voice inside you whispering terrible things about your work ethic, your lack of talent, must be minimized? Washed away in the blood of forgiveness after repentance, or sometimes silenced with focus on the breath, or spoken back to with the calm and rational voice you might use for a friend?

Because it works. Shame and blame and punishment and self loathing and mental illness don’t help you become a better person. Or a better writer. This isn’t a moral observation. This is raw practicality, the birthright of successful and canny sociopaths, and the insight of great religions and the gold standard for secular insight-based therapy, all wrapped up into one package.

This is how you get shit done.

You will do whatever it is you are trying to do if you stop wasting your energy wallowing in unhappy, negative, counter-productive thought. Whether it’s being a better person, being a better writer, or selling what you write.

Or all three at once.

---

If you found this essay inspirational, interesting, amusing, whatever, join my mailing list. I mean, if you want to. I can’t make you. But I’m asking. Because you read this, and that means I sorta love you. Um. Okay, this got awkward. Boundaries! This is the link to my mail chimp page.

There are two kinds of people. Those who are writing, and those who aren’t.

The ones writing are writers. The ones who aren’t, aren’t… at the moment.

Many folks not writing at the moment don’t feel bad, though. They could start writing again at any time! They plan to! They know they will!

Professionals, people who make a living, kinda know they will write again, pretty soon, to avoid starvation. So. They have that going for them.

Wait. Is that good?

I have a friend who is a big-five horror novelist, teacher, writer, and all around great guy. He advocates never quitting your dayjob. Of never having to write something you don’t want to write, for money. Because that happens. A lot, for the non-rock star pro writing class, ie, most of us. He has been working on his second novel, for some time now. I think he has 1000 index cards. It will be great. It takes as long as it takes.

That’s one way to do this.

I have another friend who publishes between two hundred fifty thousand and a million words a year, which is basically a short story you might read in twenty to forty minutes every single day of the year. Of course she doesn’t write short stories, but novels in the 30-60k count, in series, in a few romance sub-genres. What is that? 10? 15? I’ve stopped doing the math on her.

They’re both writers.

I have friends who have never published, who have written for years. Some have unique perspectives and are having a hard time finding publishers because of this. They’re writers.

On indypub forums I have read the stories and explored the work habits of a new generation of pulp writers, working in many genres but often romance, as romance is more than half of all fiction sold. People who have escaped day jobs… at Walmart. In other big box stores. In food service. Office temping. House cleaning. People in places with little opportunity. Making a penny a word works, for them, a hundred bucks a day, to start, working 8 hour days a day in the mines, then an 8 hour day writing, the sleeping a few hours, every day. Once they have strong back catalogs, they reach the point where they go full time.

They’re writers too.

Try to let go of Writer as Identity. Embrace Writing as action, as the act of writing, as the act of research, editing, plotting, outlining, however you do it. It’s okay, to see your life as material; it’s okay, not write, too, it’s okay to call yourself a writer, and never write. But. That feels sad to me. I think part of the word aspiring is that. Often. People who don’t let themselves think of themselves as Writers and thus, who never feel they are truly writing. For some, the identity must precede the action. So the action is delayed and diminished and never fully begun.

What I’m really saying, to the aspiring writer is that by writing you arrive. The blank page waiting before you is the exact same page that has confronted every writer since the begining of time. Every writer you have ever read sits beside you, at computers, holding notebooks, at battered typewriters, holding quils, manuscripts stuffed into pockets on battlefields, holding ball point pens in shitty diners, at tiny desks in sheds, dictating into phones, standing in line daydreaming with focus, packed into subway cars, lounging in palatial hotel suites, living in trailers, in mansions, in rented rooms, in cardboard boxes.

When you write you’re a writer. So stop aspiring and sit down and write something.

It doesn’t have to be good, for you to make it better. It doesn’t have to be good, to learn something from the act of writing it. It doesn’t have to be published, to have been worth writing.

Let yourself do this. You aspired. That’s the first part. The next part is easy. If you let yourself. If you let go of expectation, of ego, of identity, of fear, of jealousy.

Let go. Write. Read. Live. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Whatever your destination, every step brings you closer, every word appearing on the page. Like this word. And this one. And so on. Write with me.

You are a writer.

So write.

---

If you found this essay inspirational, interesting, amusing, whatever, join my mailing list. I mean, if you want to. I can’t make you. But I’m asking. Because you read this, and that means I sorta love you. Um. Okay, this got awkward. This is the link to my mail chimp page.

After invoking the ‘10,000 hours to mastery’ thing a few times, a friend has pointed out, with characteristic grandmotherly kindness, that Malcom Gladwell’s idea is, in a word, non-scientific. Or rather, wrong.

Or you could say, total bullshit.

One very good reason for this is that Gladwell isn’t a scientist; he’s a popularizer who summarizes scientific thought. This in his own words:

“I am a story-teller, and I look to academic research … for ways of augmenting story-telling. The reason I don’t do things their way is because their way has a cost: it makes their writing inaccessible. If you are someone who has as their goal … to reach a lay audience … you can’t do it their way.”

Critiques of Gladwell’s idea that 10,000 hours turns anyone into a pro are easy to find on the web now, though they are a bit harder to find than positive reviews of his work. Gladwell responded to this criticism by saying: “No one succeeds at a high level without innate talent.”

Which makes you wonder… where the hell did that 10,000 number come from in the first place, if not a close read of the actual science?

The answer contains a sliver of hope for those toiling away at stuff for what feels like a long time. 

Looking at great classical musicians, you see people who practice. A lot. The kind of practice that the 10,000 hours suggest makes someone great. However, a recent study has found that practice accounts for only 20% of the success of these musicians. Leaving something else to explain the other 80%.

Some call this thing talent. But who knows? It could be beneficent angels or aliens. Whatever. What science doesn’t know, science doesn’t know, and that’s the point in being careful about Gladwell, and in fact, most popularizers of science. Sometimes telling a good story means playing with the facts.

So where did that idea come from? That time invested equals mastery?

People often work hard at things they are good at, and I say this like Gladwell, based on anecdotes, life experiences, and intuition. It seems often to be true.

People who are good at things often seem to work like crazy on them.

So. If you find yourself wondering about that 10,000 number, and trying, and failing to figure out how the hell you even count hours, to become a writer, when every single second of experience can be thought of as content if not practice, you can take comfort in the unscientific idea that your sticking with writing puts you alongside people who do succeed.

But this doesn’t mean you will succeed at the highest level automatically, without (mystery ingredient X, which I still refuse to call Talent. Let’s call it The Practice Multiplier. No. Let’s just call it ingredient X. That is more fun.)

Bottom line, which is why I think ingredient X and its lack shouldn’t stop you: Writing is Good. Writing is good for you, for me, for people who never publish a word, for people who sell a few poems or stories, for bestselling authors, and everyone and everything in between.

Writing is mindful. Writing is a kind of meditation. Writing reveals what you love. Writing reveals you to others. Writing is catharsis. Writing creates empathy. Writing is therapy. Writing won’t bankrupt you unless you do it all the time and make no money and insist the world owes you a living for it. (don’t do that.) Writing creates little in the way of greenhouse gas. Writing makes books which for many people are one of the main reasons to go on living. Books make culture. Culture makes humanity.

Writing and research and new learning associated with it creates new synaptic connections in the brain, cognitive surplus, which retards the development and advancement of dementia.

That’s a new one.

I will, with a clean conscience, advise writers to keep writing, for as long as they find it meaningful. If they are very sad, about their writing, about its reception, and find no joy it, I’ll agree they should stop, but not without suggesting they first attack that sadness head on, to see if something else is the cause. Though quitting for a while is fine.

I quit for 18 years. That was a mistake.

Did I write for 10,000  hours overall, in my first try, before I gave up? Maybe. Am I a professional now? According to SFWA I am. My few dozen sales might make me look professional to some. I’m gonna say I write at a professional level, though I do not make a living at it. Some days I add the word Yet, to that sentence, and other days I think, “oh. I must lack ingredient X. I am doomed.”

So I ask myself, is writing meaningful to me?

And I put in more hours.

I sat down and wrote a new short story.

Done.

So that was fast. But seriously… To talk about how I defeated the block we have to agree that I was, in fact, blocked, and that I have in fact, beaten that block, and then, I need to generalize something out of that experience that justifies hitting the ‘publish’ button. Which I might not do.

There! That’s a part of it, isn’t it? I don’t know if this essay is worth publishing already… so why write it again? God knows people smarter than me have defeated far more serious blocks, oh, not only smarter, but much better writers, so, use the Google, go read them.

Never mind about me, my writing, this essay, okay I’ll quit now this was a waste of time. God I’m an idiot. Why are I doing this again?

And there it is. See? I let it out. Christ it’s ugly.

TRIGGER WARNING: I’m gonna spew my whole ugly internal monolog below; this will seem crazy and awful to some and familiar to others; the steps for beating the block are tucked inside a mind  trying to write this article. And what it feels like to break out, bit by bit, like a baby bird chipping out of its egg with its pathetically tiny beak. 

Being blocked is how you talk yourself out of doing something you kinda sorta love to do and kinda sort really wanna do but can’t do as much you kinda sorta wanna do.

It’s a way you talk to yourself that you’d never talk to anyone else. Unless the person you’re talking to is aspiring to opiod abuse or child molestation. Or joining a stupid religious cult.

Hm. Is writing a stupid religious cult?

There! There it is again! It’s never far from me. Always within arm’s reach.

People who have never had blocks, really, who have neutotypical brains and good work and study skills like to write essays about defeating procrastination and they often start with sound simple advice you can’t act on. At all.

Because you’re a weak ass fuck.

Imagine the beach house you will buy when you’re a bestselling author! Clip a picture out of a magazine and put it on the bulletin board next to where you write!

Look. That works for some people. And I’m making fun of it, like a dick, because, here is rule 1 to getting out of your writers block–

1. Your solution may be unique to you. Keep trying everybody’s else’s ideas as best you can till you figure it out, but don’t be surprised if the first few attempts don’t pan out.
2. My own list is idiosyncratic. I’m weird. If you think it’s stupid laugh at it and me. It’s okay. I can’t hear you. Huh, the voice changed in this list. Never mind. keep going.
3. Find someone who likes what you do and listen to them for a period of time about your work. Look at positive reviews. Imagine people out there that might like what you might do.
4. Okay, that didn’t work, those people were you friends or family or the occasional odd stranger on the net, who knows you only through your work, whose opinion ought to mean something, but this isn’t working so on to the next.
5. Lower your standards. Prime the pump. Push out the brown water that collected in your creative pipes. (I know. Eww.)
6. That sort of works, doesn’t it? You’re not ready to believe in 3. Christ I’m an idiot. This numbering reads as a kind of ordering and this is the wrong order. Is there even a right one?
7. Let that go. 
8. Play. You’re playing at the thing. You’re a dilettante. That’s okay. Dabble. It’s your hobby. Roll around in the misery of these words for a bit while you dabble away, you weak ass dabbling piece of shit hobbyist motherfucker who will never be professional, you. If it’s working. If these words make you sad, fuck this shit. Go to the next.
9. Start something great, that has been inside you, waiting to get out, that you have returned to, in memory. Remember those ideas, that were too big, that you couldn’t do, that needed research, that you had to be a better writer to do? Start one of those. Oh, and skip the research. Do that later. Life’s too short.
10. Oh. You’re just dabbling. You didn’t do the research! So this is nothing. So… hey the pressures off. Keep going. Don’t look at your feet. Don’t be the centipede that forgets how to walk because suddenly it’s all complicated, oh, it is complicated, oh, I CAN’T RESTORE A MAN’S BRAIN, JIM! THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE TEACHERS IS FADING!
11. Oh, you stopped. You looked at your feet, didn’t you?
12. Search for other people’s inspirational crap. Read it. Be annoyed that none of it is really working. Begin to panic.
13. Well. there’s that crap you managed to pump out, the play stuff. You can edit that. Make it better. Not good enough to send out maybe. But you can make it better.
14. Edit. Start to like the stupid crap more than it deserves. 
15. Edit more. Start to think maybe someone would like this thing, someone could buy it.
16. Get frustrated editing and start something new. Oh, you’re being a loser, you should be finishing that thing you started and submitting it. Write more raw crap instead. God. You have zero discipline don’t you?
17. Finish original thing. Well. Abandon it.
18. Send first thing out. For fun. To get a rejection and feel like you’re in the game.
19. Keep playing and start the next thing you believe in before you get the first thing rejected. Start two, three… or a hundred if you can. Forget I said a hundred. Just start two! Wait! One is enough!
20. Look at your feet. But keep walking. Think, Holy shit. Am I blocked anymore? My feet keep walking. Now stop looking at them. 
21. Don’t write for some time. Start again. Nope. Not blocked. Only lazy! Lazy lazy lazy. Hey. Be a bit less lazy. Read productivity essays. Be annoyed at the people who write them, and those they work for. Those judgemental neurotpyical assholes. 

So, you’re not blocked anymore. Now. Don’t stop writing long. Remember to play, do fun things. Remember to edit those things when you feel like you can’t write. Remember to fall in love with the things you edit, because hey, you made them better and that was some hard work, wasn’t it?

Remember to play, to work, to wonder, to be critical, to be kind, to be hopeful, to despair a bit knowing that you can get past the despair, let go of expectations, do it anyway, have expectations, do it anyway, be broken hearted about rejection, keep going, be briefly happy at small success, look at others greater success in social media and experience burning jealousy and angry self loathing at your jealousy, but hit the ‘like’ button anyway, keep going, keep going, keep going.

You have inertia now. Object in motion.

I was gonna map this shit onto my little career, he says, resisting the quotes around the word, but you don’t care, you haven’t read my work most likely, so suffice to say, my most loved novella was that thing that I wasn’t qualified to write that I was ruminating on for 18 years. Know that I did no research until I was well into it.

Know that it became the cover novella in a magazine that has been around for 40 years, and that these flagship magazines in the genre linger for decades, and that people go back and read them, for decades, and that one day, after I am dead, someone, will pick up that story, and read it and have a good time with it, and think briefly of the man who wrote it, and I’ll be there, in his or her mind, outlined in the magic fire of the world that came alive in me that I made come alive in them.

He won’t wonder if it was worth writing.

She won’t care that it took me eighteen years of dithering.

They won’t lament the novels I didn’t write in that period.

Nobody agonizes over the missing novels of Raymond Carver.

They just enjoy the short stories.

Go and make the thing now. Or play at doing that. That future reader will thank you, after you’re gone. The payoff might even come quicker, but it doesn’t have to. 

Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. Man gotta ask, why why why?

And centipedes never forget how to walk. That was a metaphor. For a thing that never happens.

Ponder that. Whoever made that metaphor was a fucking asshole! Think this while you take that first step without thinking.

And write.

P.S: I’m Okay. I’m fine.

P.P.S: Okay, this edit is a month past the original writing of the post, and it turns out I was NOT fine. This is the post that made me realize I was white-knuckling it, pushing hard through a lot of negative stuff. I’ve been working on this lately, doing CBT,  mindfulness meditation, and taking meds at the right dosage and it’s changed my outlook.

I debated about taking this thing down, but decided to leave it up, as it represents how people can be fizzling flaming train wrecks inside and still be performing, still keep moving and working. 

But it doesn’t help, to be like that.

If you are, work on it. 

And if you’re all about goals? Then do it to help the writing.

 

 

So, there’s a thing we all know about now, or most of us do, about how people we might think of as successful, people with real credentials, feel like frauds. Imposters. This feeling gets in the way of getting work done, saps at the creative person’s energy, makes them skittish, distant, weird, off-putting, difficult… any or all of these things.

It’s worse for women than men, as the world frequently conspires to reinforce the syndrome when women display it; but it’s bad for everyone.

According to Wikipedia, about 70% of the population suffers from this feeling at some time in their life.

Also from Wikipedia:

People who suffer from impostor syndrome tend to reflect and dwell upon extreme failure, mistakes and negative feedback from others. If not addressed, impostor syndrome can limit exploration and the courage to delve into new experiences, in fear of exposing failure. ^[14][19]

A number of management options are available to ease impostor syndrome. The most prominent is to discuss the topic with other individuals early on in the career path. ^{[14] [20]} Mentors can discuss experiences, where impostor syndrome was prevalent. ^[14][16] Most people who experience impostor syndrome are unaware that others feel inadequate as well. Once the situation is addressed, victims no longer feel alone in their negative experience. It is also noted, that reflecting upon impostor feelings is key to overcoming this burden. ^[21] Making a list of accomplishments, positive feedback and success stories will also aid to manage impostor syndrome. ^[20] Finally, developing a strong support system, who provides feedback on performance and has discussions about imposter syndrome on a regular basis is imperative for those experiencing impostorship.

It’s not really definable as a distinct mental illness, with a diagnostic category and treatment options, thank God, it’s just one of those terrible things we have to deal with, like grief, and loss and sadness.

Except, Imposter syndrome accompanies the good things in life; the promotions; the publications; the awards.

I had a fantasy, when I started writing. In the daydream, I track down a famous Real Writer, who I had emailed a short story, and I ask her, am I any good? Will I ever be a real writer?

She says, “No. You won’t.”

I say, “Why? What is it in my story that tells you I’ll never succeed?”

She says, “I didn’t read your story. I’m not an editor. It’s this question that’s the problem. You don’t believe in yourself, or your work. So. It’s very unlikely you’ll ever see this through. I’m sorry. But you asked. I won’t lie to you.”

This makes me furious. I’m struck dumb. I now hate the famous writer!

I spend years trying to prove her wrong. I do. I am published and win awards and I see her at a convention, where I catch her eye and get her alone in a hallway and she says.

“You’re welcome.”

I wrote for six years, seeking the validation of a handful of editors, who didn’t give it to me. I quit without really ever intending to, sucked into good-paying work, and found myself giving it another go, twenty years later, ten years after that work evaporated.

In 2012, at age 50, I got my validation. Asimovs. F&SF. Interzone. Galaxies Edge. Fantastic Stories. A novella anthologized in the years best.

And inside, I still feel, when I write, exactly the same. Either I’m lost in the story, happy and absent, no-mind, or, I’m looking at the damn thing thinking, Dear God I’m mediocre. Why don’t I stop doing this and give foot rubs to homeless people?

But now and then, when I’m rewriting something that a highly respected editor says they might publish, particularly, I get this feeling, this glimpse, of just accepting myself, the writer I am, and getting on with telling whatever stories are mine to tell. Getting over myself, beyond myself, and Just Doing It.

In summary; if you feel like you’ll never get there, keep at it and you probably will. It might take twenty years. Who cares. What else are you going to do with your life?

If you get there, a little bit there, and you feel like you haven’t gotten there, know that, we all feel that; most of us do. It’s normal. Maybe it gets better. But if you could do the thing with zero success for a long time, you can keep at it, as an imposter, can’t you? You’re no worse off really.

And if you have succeeded, and can do the thing you do confident in your abilities… please email me and tell me how you did it.

My best case scenario now is a kind of blissful dis-engagement with expectation. I’d love to just think I was actually doing this thing.

That I’m doing.

According to some.

TODAYS ACCOMPLISHMENT: Rewrote 1700 word story for F&SF; it’s now 2200 words; netted 500 words by writing 1000.