What makes us a “writer”?
Impostor syndrome is such a pain in the ass. Setting up an author blog feels like an arrogant move when you’re unpublished. It is, in fact, exactly what you’re supposed to do to begin building your brand, your audience, but all the same it feels hollow. “Look at me! A “future” published author!”
But the thing is, not having a published novel on a shelf doesn’t mean we’re not writers. Likely we’ve been doing some form of it our whole lives. When do we let ourselves trust that our vision is more than just a dream we want others to believe in before we do?
What does success look like?
We need to define success first. Every author dreams of something, and that’s our starting place. What do you consider success? Is it having your work read? Making a lot of money? Making enough to live off, at least? Is it to become a famous big name?
For me, it’d be so cool to be the author going on book tours and sitting in on book club meetings with pumpkin spice lattes and fall leaves scattering outside the window. But really, I just want people to connect to my stories. I want to write narratives about people who don’t get to see themselves in traditional media.
My biggest dream as an author: to have people write fanfiction about my stuff. That’s when I’ll feel like I’ve really “made it.”
Because you know what? Fanfiction is such a cool way to engage with content that you love, to analyze it, transform it. It’s a great way to connect to other fans and share your enthusiasm. Having that robust of a community around something I’ve created is my personal measure of success. (Of course, I’m not saying it should be yours. Some authors really aren’t a fan of the concept.)
Anyway. Regardless of what your vision might be as an aspiring author, you need to define it for yourself first. Your measure of success isn’t going to look like other people’s. There’s no magic number that says you’ve Made It.
So if that’s true, how can we let go of this inner critic that says we need to hit a certain benchmark to validate our perception of ourselves as a writer?
I’m not always sure. It’s a scary world out there, publishing-wise.
There’s this sobering moment for us as writers when we’re excited enough about our big idea and our shiny manuscript that we decide to go big and look into publishing. “Okay,” we think. “What’s the first step?”
Reality.
There’s so much talk about the hard slap of putting yourself out there in the first place, let alone getting published, that it’s easy to get discouraged.
I wrote two and a half novels of my current series before I stopped and decided it was a good time to get into marketing myself and connecting with the industry. (Hint: the best time to do this is before you publish anything, anyway.) But it’s scary. What do I have to show for myself with no published books on the shelf?
I’m not entirely sure yet whether I’m thinking to self-publish or try for traditional. I’m also considering serializing and posting it online. That’s part of why I started an author blog. Not just because it’s good branding/essential to building a platform, but because it’s a place to talk about the process, the research, and the social aspects of the experience. And I need to process those things just as much as my actual stories.
Part of that process has included researching the industry to get a sense for what I’m heading into.
Uh oh
I have a couple of bad habits. One, I put the cart before the horse too often. My neurodivergent brain sometimes has trouble prioritizing lists of tasks, so “needs to be done first” and “needs to be done way in the future when you’ve established X, Y, and Z” are the same step to me, and are of equal importance.
And of course, with publishing a novel, there are a lot of steps. Trying to figure out what to prioritize when I’m an unpublished author with no audience is very different from what I will prioritize as a published author with a following. My brain sees them as one and the same, though, and when I research, I get tripped up on the “have tos” and have no idea where to actually start.
The other bad habit I struggle with, and I think this is true for many of us, is my tendency to worry and overthink. I have a lot of the same stresses everyone else does. Am I good enough? Am I big enough to tell my story? Who am I to think that I deserve to tell this story? Why do I think I can make it? Am I a good enough writer, storyteller, and creative to ever matter?
I started writing a novel series about the kind of characters I don’t get to see in traditional media. And at first, the excitement of writing something I was passionate to see fueled me a good distance into my project. Then, I started researching. And that was a mistake.
Researching makes me feel more in control, but also makes me feel more anxious. The more I research, the more I learn, and the more I learn, the less pretty it looks.
For instance:
It’s a harsh world out there. We’ve got ever-changing genre trends, gatekeeping, racism, and ableism in the publishing industry. We’ve got the shifting priorities and demands of bookstores. Not to mention the fact that our polarized world fosters flame wars and death threats over differences in opinion. It’s terrifying. It seems like a really bad time to get into publishing.
On top of that, it’s a flooded market out there. Maybe more so post-pandemic, when so many had the time to pull out forgotten manuscripts or try their hand at the novel they’d had in mind. What makes you so special? What makes you stand out?
So you’re faced with hard decisions as a writer. We all have our reasons for writing, and figuring those reasons out in the beginning is essential. So, too, is sitting with the question: are you okay with the sacrifices you have to make to succeed?
For marginalized writers, there are a lot of sacrifices we have to make.
So what do we do?
I want to believe in myself. And I do. I’m going to write whether I publish or not. Whether my stories sell or not. I care about my vision. Still, a sobering truth hits you when you embark on the publishing process. Not all writers and stories are given an equal opportunity to succeed. And that’s by design. Do I think I’m strong enough, or my stories are special enough, to break past those barriers?
I don’t know. But I’m going to try anyway.
I have to trust myself and this process. I don’t know what my publishing route will look like at the end of the journey. My knee-jerk instinct is to avoid talking about the journey until I’ve completed it, but that’s a habit I’m trying to change. There’s no shame in talking about the uncertainty, the pathways we take, the failures and lessons along the way.
Besides, the most important thing is making stuff and sharing it. If it takes off and becomes something commercial, cool. But if not, at least I had fun making it.
We should always remember the joy in the creative process. Getting to put it out there in any public sense is a bonus, and letting the fear of failure stop us will only inhibit our potential. There’s a brave act of defiance in writing what matters to you, regardless of the outcome.
The first step is this: if you sit down and write, you’re a writer. No one else needs to see a word for that to matter.