What have you published?
One simple sentence, and it's like the past three years of my life never happened.
Fellow Inkies, if you're reading this, you understand what I'm saying. It doesn't feel like it's been a year since we graduated from Hogwarts. When I look back on it now I am overcome with nostalgia. I've been looking over the few posts I did while I was still a student there, and it warmed my heart to think of how far I've come as a writer. I didn't even consider myself a writer until the year before I started at VCFA. Writing was just an idea, a "hey, maybe I can do this." When that became a reality, though, a part of me was still stuck in the "just an idea" mindset. I was a writing student, but my classmates were writers. I'm sure you can remember the posts full of angst and insecurity. I was so young, so inexperienced, so afraid. I laughed to myself when I read those posts. 'Ha! I was such a baby. I'm nothing like that now. I'm a professional.' Right?
Right?
Right?!
"He's gonna know I'm a fraud!" Those are the words I sent to my friend back in 2010. They were about a class I barely remember, way back when I was a music major. Do they sound familiar? I'm pretty sure I've repeated them a million times since then, about a million different situations. I say them about my writing. I say them about jobs I apply for. I say them about attractive guys I see for a split second in a crowded public place.
But why? Why do I spend all of my time apologizing for my shortcomings, be they imagined or not? I know I'm not the only one to feel this way, as many times as I thought I was. I see friends and classmates posting about this impostor syndrome. I read articles about others who also feel like fakes. I know that what I feel is real. Yet I can't silence that whisper telling me that it's only a matter of time before the mask slips.
It would be so easy for me to tell you to "ignore that little voice" or "repeat to yourself that you aren't an imposter," but I'm living proof that that feeling never really goes away. I've just learned to work around it. Write down the bad, get it out of your head. Write down the doubts and the fears and the anxiety and see what's behind it.
Write your heart out. And maybe don't check your emails from your alma mater. Just kidding.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a character shouting in my ear that I've been ignoring her for far too long.