Ever feel like a fraud? Like you’re somewhere you don’t belong? “Oh, all these people are so much smarter than me. I don’t fit in with them.” Or “I don’t have the experience that they all do. How could I help in this situation?” Or maybe “I haven’t work on my stories in months. I don’t deserve to be called a writer?” It gets to a point where you’re faking it. Faking a smile or faking your confidence just to hide how scared you are or how isolated you feel. People tell you: Fake it ’til you make it, but those feelings of fraud have a way of coming back.
Last week, I had the great opportunity to attend a Writing Day Workshop. When I signed up for it at the beginning of the year. I was stoked for it. I just reached a new “record low” for my novel’s wordcount and hired a professional editor to take a look at it (and he still is). My novel has never felt so close to being done and ready for publishing. I was super excited. I even paid for some time slots to be able to pitch my novel to a couple agents.
That was back in February. Fast forward to now, June. When it came time for the Writing Day Workshop, I was as anxious as a warthog in a new environment. I haven’t work on any of my novels since February. Between getting full time at my zoo and other stuff going on, the time to write either wasn’t there or I had no motivation to. It ate at me, but I’m guilty of not picking myself up from my bootstraps and just getting to work on writing. So, when the workshop came around, I felt like a fraud. Like I didn’t have a right to attend because I haven’t been writing or why should I bother pitching when I wasn’t prepared for it? I felt like a fraud and I feared it showed.
Good thing the workshop was expensive, because the reason of not letting that money go to waste kept me going.
My family helped me make sure I had all I needed to attend and I was able to work on my pitch during lunch at work. When the workshop started, those feelings of fraud began to go away. I took notes through the whole thing, contemplated a novel I was stuck on based on what the classes were saying. And, you know what? The inspiration came back. The drive to set new goals and practice finishing. I still had butterflies in my stomach when it came to the pitches, but I was feeling more encouraged by the end of the first day of workshops.
Then came the pitches. I used the pitches I thought up at lunch. It was a new take on my pitches before. I hadn’t had the chance to try it out on anyone, but I felt it better described my stories than my pitches in the past. I pitched two agents over Zoom and the technical issues spiked my anxieties. I ended up having to restart my computer for one of them and couldn’t have my notes up on a separate tab up for either of them. I felt like I was pitching blind, going off what wording I could remember, and hoping I didn’t look like a fool in the process.
Both agents invited me to query them my novel.
For those of you who don’t know, that’s huge. I got the literary agents interested. I’m in their special inbox of “I met that author at a conference, liked her idea, and I want to read more.” I could still get rejected. I could send them my query and both decide they don’t like the project. Yet, when you’ve been feeling like a fraud of a writer for the past couple of months and you get two agents interested while you’re in a panicked and anxious state, that’s a victory right there. That’s a renewal of hope that even though you’ve been out, you’re not down.
While I’m using this post to share my victory, I hope moving forward, you don’t let feelings of fraud keep you from your passions. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been out of it for a while, you can always dive back in. I’m going to do that with my writing. Try a little every day to get some progress whether its typing up an idea or writing a paragraph of story. There’s a lot of waiting in the getting published process and through that waiting, I need to be working on what’s next. Practice finishing my projects.
Whether you’re a writer or whether you’re chasing another dream. Please remember: you’re not a fraud.
nikki diekemper 