I’m a Fucking Good Writer

I rarely reread what I’ve written. After going through all the drafts and the revisions and publishing process, I will hate the book and I won’t want to see it again for awhile. Eventually I do reread, and this week I reread my Putting the Fun in Funeral. This was a gift book. That means that it came easily and fast and was like a gift from the universe. I loved writing it and I loved the book after. Rereading has not diminished my love of it.

What surprised me as I read it was me thinking, wow! This is really good. Wow! I’m a good writer. And eventually I got to “I’m a fucking good writer!”

As a writer, this is an unusual state of mind. Generally we feel like crap writer frauds who will be discovered at any moment. We are embarrassed to acknowledge our achievements because they aren’t that good or they are awful and what is wrong with you readers who like this drivel???

Recently I reread something else I wrote and felt absolutely awful. It was good and my reaction was that I couldn’t write like that. I couldn’t begin to hope to write as well as that. Apparently I figured I’d already written all my good words and now I was a hack. Now it’s not unusual for people to compare polished, published books by other people to their drafts and decide they are crap writers, even though, once again, they are comparing a POLISHED and FINISHED book to a ROUGH DRAFT. Yes I did feel the need for caps. Writers do this all the time. I felt really stupid doing that with my own finished and polished novel, yet that’s exactly what I did and I felt awful.

Claiming your talent, claiming your abilities and acknowledging you are a good writer is tough to do. It feels like bragging and it feels like arrogant asshole behavior. And yet–writers need to get the word out that their work is good and worth reading and that they are fabulous writers. We need to be proud of ourselves and we need to voice that pride.

So here’s your question: when have you encountered imposter syndrome? What did you do about it, if anything? And what can you do today, right here, right now, to beat down the imposter syndrome? What will you do going forward?

As for me, I’m just going to say this: I’m a fucking good writer.

Also, that’s my doodle of a corgi boy.