Impostor Syndrome ...

Or is that Imposter Syndrome? I'm not sure about the spelling ...

Wait.

How can you not know how to spell that? You're a writer? Really? Really? Are you sure about that?

The honest truth (redundant) is I'm not sure, and from what I've seen, there are a lot of people who feel the same way about themselves. This happens in all artistic pursuits. Am I musician if I don't get paid for making music? Am I an artist if I've never learned about all of the technical aspects of the visual arts? Am I a poet if no one reads my poems?

There are ways of handling this, though --at least, I hope there are. I am going to walk you through what I did this morning in the hopes that at least one other person can use it. It's working for me, and I hate the thought that someone would go through the feeling alone. Incidentally, this syndrome is a chronic condition, and there is no cure --only medicine to help deal with the symptoms.

______________________

To set the scene: I finished writing the first draft of a play last night. I read some plays by Tom Stoppard this morning. 

I've never written a play before. I read Tom Stoppard.

Flash forward to now: I am not curled up in the fetal position. I have, however, recently experienced an unhealthy dose of, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

I am not Tom Stoppard.

I am also not Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, Joe Orton, Noel Coward, Eve Ensler, Tennessee Williams, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Lillian Hellman, Lorraine Hansberry, or William Shakespeare (although people aren't sure about who Shakespeare really was, so maybe I am).

I am me. 

And I wanted to write a play. Why? Because I saw a notice asking for 1-2 person plays and because the structure fit better for a story I had in my head than prose or poetry. I enjoy writing. Does it matter why? Am I hurting anyone by trying?

If I measure myself against the list of playwrights above, I'm going to suck at playwriting. I am not being mean to myself by saying this --it is fact. The reason: I am comparing myself --little ol' me --to the collected wisdom and talents of those people, all of whom did it for a long time and are widely recognized as experts. Not only that, but I'm also likely comparing what I've written to their best works. Seems unfair.

And rather than feel threatened by the fact that there are other people out there who may do the same thing better than I do, wouldn't it make more sense to look at what they did? It is time tested. What worked? While trying to avoid becoming Tom Stoppard Lite™, I can still take a close look at what worked.




Okay, that's comparing myself taken care of --I'm not Tom Stoppard, but I'm sure as heck going to try and figure out how he does what he does. Now to the big existential question ...





So what happens if I put all of this work into this play and learning how to write plays, and it goes nowhere.

No one reads it. No one sees it.

What if it is the literary equivalent of one hand clapping or the tree falling in the woods?

Was it a waste of my time? Am I pretending to be something I'm not? Under it all, and especially if a person is trying to make a living off of her art, these are biggies. 

Do you know what happens if nothing happens? 

Nothing. 

I don't disappear. I am still here. 

I still feel the same creative impulses. I always learn a lot in the process. I plan on learning more and trying more because I am not dead yet, and have I got anything better to do than try and make sense of the world and maybe communicate to some people in the process? I have a day job, because survival is important in the meantime, but I am not an impostor --or imposter, or however you spell it. 



I am a writer because I write, and I plan to continue doing so for as long as I can. Maybe, at some point along the way, I'll learn to use a dictionary to look up spelling. It's a process ...