I’ve got writer’s woes
Fear, doubt and imposter syndrome. These three are QUITE the party, aren’t they? I’m sure none of this is news to other new writers, but I’m wading through these murky waters for the first time and finding these nagging little demons quite unsettling.
Confidence is not something I’ve lacked in life, as a rule – it’s one of the things that growing up in a military family gifts you, allowing you to stroll into a new school in a new country on a wet Tuesday in November and make a whole circle of new friends by lunchtime, then leave two years later and do it all over again. I’m comfortable speaking in public, going on telly, doing live radio, writing blogs that publish in real time to an audience of hundreds of thousands of people. I am not, by any measure, one of life’s shrinking violets.
But man, publishing a book has been an emotional rollercoaster. I’ve been through the initial fear of ‘is this any good? Why am I doing this? Who the hell do I think I am, pretending to be a novelist?’, to deciding every other book ever written is better than mine, to (my current favourite) heart-thumping nausea every time I click to read a review. I’ve been called a Whore of Satan on the Guardian website, but nothing has prepared me for the gut-wrenching self-doubt and imposter syndrome of publishing a novel.
So here’s what I’m reminding myself of on a daily basis:
It was good enough to catch the attention of a literary agent and a publisher, it’s probably not the worst book ever written.
It’s only your first book. There will be others, and you will learn and grow and improve.
Lots of people won’t like your book, in the same way that you don’t like every book that you’ve ever read.
Some of these people will feel the urge to tell you how crap your book is. Many others will be kind and lovely and supportive. Feedback is a gift so accept it graciously, even if it’s a crap gift that you really didn’t want. Stick the crap gifts in a drawer and forget about them.
If F. Scott Fitzgerald had read the online reviews of The Great Gatsby, he’d have been pretty bloody depressed about it.
The Great Gatsby is an objectively terrible book, and that did OK.
Seriously, how on earth did The Great Gatsby get published?
I’m working through it, learning every day. Remembering to breathe. Tips always welcome, obvs.