I just sold a few more short stories which should be a time for celebration. This would have been a balm to my persistent Imposter Syndrome (IS,) which has bedeviled me for more years than I care to count in both my former professional and now writing life. I have never been comfortable since I am continually waiting for a red-robed fanatic to jump through the door screaming my unworthiness and revealing that I am a fraud, a cheat, and a charlatan. That I am unable to produce anything worth reading without a maddening amount of rewriting, editing, more rewriting, editing, going back and rewriting the rewrite to its original form, and changing words even as the galleys are being reviewed. I'd scribble improvements (edits) in the margins of magazines if B&N didn't take offense.
But the sale(s) didn't give me the congratulatory euphoria I expected because I'd just read a twitter post by Charlie Stross* bemoaning another writer's affliction that I fear has afflicted me - the dreaded OTH (Over The Hill) syndrome. OTH makes me worry that my best writing years are behind me, that I am no longer the innovative upstart I once fantasized I was, that words no longer seem to flow effortlessly from my fingers to the page, and that the modest skills I've acquired over the succeeding years have been steadily deteriorating. Every new draft begs the question if I will be able or capable of finishing it. Every editing pass of endless drafts seem to highlight the unworthiness of my scribliing. Every rejection is a stake in my heart that illogically reinforces both my IS and OTH syndromes!
Sure, you struggling, beginning writers might scoff: "That will never happen to me," but in the late dark hours of your career these thoughts will haunt you, wrapping their tangles of hopelessness about your creative imagination and suffusing your muse with doubts even as you struggle to do one more sentence, one more scene, one more story, one more chapter, and one more submission.
But you continue to write.
#SFWApro
But the sale(s) didn't give me the congratulatory euphoria I expected because I'd just read a twitter post by Charlie Stross* bemoaning another writer's affliction that I fear has afflicted me - the dreaded OTH (Over The Hill) syndrome. OTH makes me worry that my best writing years are behind me, that I am no longer the innovative upstart I once fantasized I was, that words no longer seem to flow effortlessly from my fingers to the page, and that the modest skills I've acquired over the succeeding years have been steadily deteriorating. Every new draft begs the question if I will be able or capable of finishing it. Every editing pass of endless drafts seem to highlight the unworthiness of my scribliing. Every rejection is a stake in my heart that illogically reinforces both my IS and OTH syndromes!
Sure, you struggling, beginning writers might scoff: "That will never happen to me," but in the late dark hours of your career these thoughts will haunt you, wrapping their tangles of hopelessness about your creative imagination and suffusing your muse with doubts even as you struggle to do one more sentence, one more scene, one more story, one more chapter, and one more submission.
But you continue to write.
*who introduced me to Scrivener years ago
#SFWApro
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