Everyday Canvas

Insecure? Yes, But I'll Keep on Writing

Prompt: Do you ever feel like an impostor when you read other writers here on WDC? How do you handle that insecurity that strikes us all?

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All writers are insecure sometimes. This is a fact. In my case, it doesn’t have anything to do with other writers here or anywhere else. For the highly accomplished and for those with brilliant ideas, I only feel admiration.

It is true that I always worry about what I write. Did I skip something, overlooked an idea, or could an ending or a beginning be written better? Does the middle sag? Although I feel great pleasure while I am writing, I am never absolutely sure of the quality of the work that I end up with. Maybe for the same reason, also, I don’t like revising all that much. What if the revised version is worse than the original?

I don’t feel like an impostor, though, but more like a below-average learner, as with each new work and with each approach, any writer is a newbie, unless he or she has succumbed to formulaic writing. To be an impostor, you have to imitate someone. I imitate no one, and for better or worse, this is it. I have done the best to learn anything that came my way concerning this craft. Still, this much or this little is what I can do. As the saying goes, it doesn’t help to kick a dead horse.

Yet, to start a new project and apply my butt to the desk chair requires a strong feeling. That strong feeling, I think, is hope; hope that the next piece will meet my standards, or at least, in the end, I’ll feel lighter as if I just came out of confession. Probably that’s why I like free-flow so much. What comes out always surprises me; although, what I write as free-flow is on paper and not on the screen, and since it is free-flow, I don’t expect perfection.

Probably, that’s why I like blogging, too. My blog is mostly free-flow, even if I first write an entry in a computer file, then copy and paste it into my blog, with a slight, superficial editing afterwards. In addition, I don’t write for money or fame, but I’ll try to help those who do. There is nothing wrong with wanting those things, even if to me, how much I progress and how good a time I have while writing are important.

I write because it is second nature to me. During the times when I couldn’t write due to real-life, I always felt less of a person.

I am sure many writers share my insecurities. Even the most noted, accomplished authors of yesteryear must have felt insecure at one time or another. Franz Kafka, for example, didn’t want his work published at all. Hemingway was never sure of himself even though he talked big and sometimes put down his contemporaries. In some authors’ cases, fame makes them insecure. Some stop writing after becoming famous, like Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird who wrote her second novel decades later.

In short, we writers cast our darkest shadows on our writing, and that’s why our view of our own work is always hazy. Precisely, because of this, despite our high expectations and insecurities, we must keep trying, for our very personal reasons that transcend publication, fame, and money.