How not to measure your success
Interrupting the shame cycle of imposter syndrome.
In my last post, I talked about how imposter syndrome is bad math because it causes us to compare ourselves to others (which is never a fair comparison).
So why do we do that?
We compare ourselves to others when we are afraid.
And it’s logical to be afraid. Writing a book makes you vulnerable. It’s a ton of hard work, it opens you up to criticism, and it creates the possibility that you might try and fail.
Comparing ourselves to other writers is one way we try to keep ourselves safe. If we conclude that we can never be as good as the writers we admire, it stands to reason that we shouldn’t try. The comparison is an attempt to save us from all the hard work, criticism, and failure.
But if we quit before we ever try, we also don’t get to experience the satisfaction, pride, and joy of creation that we, as creators, long for. This is why we keep trying, sometimes just white-knuckling it through fear, doubt, and comparisons to the writers we look up to (where we inevitably come up short).
The result is a vicious cycle of self-shaming – you attempt a project but experience a setback → this leads to feelings of inadequacy and fear of failing → which leads to comparing yourself to others, validating your feelings of inadequacy → which leads to giving up before trying → which leads to feeling inadequate because you gave up … and so on.
But there is a way to interrupt this cycle, and it happens when you learn how to use the right math for the right job.
There is zero value in comparing our output to the output of other creatives. Here are the real benchmarks:
Evaluate where YOU are, right now. Published, unpublished, the first draft done or not, written fiction since you were a kid, never written fiction, whatever. Wherever YOU are, that’s where you start to measure.
Every step after that, no matter how small, is a moment of success.
Every word on the page, every manuscript or short story edited, pitched, or submitted for publication, every critique, every day you put your butt in the chair and words come out. It’s all motion, momentum, and a testament to your journey and your expertise as a writer.
And consider tracking it. When was the last time you looked at your word counts? For your current project, or for a past project? Have you printed out your current manuscript, just to feel the heft, the weight of it? How many years have you been writing? How many classes or workshops have you taken? If you are a gold star on the chart kind of person, get yourself some gold stars. One goes on the calendar each time you work on your project. Revision counts. Research counts. Workshops count.
It ALL counts.
It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing. They have their own unit of measurement. Be encouraging, be supportive, learn what you can from your colleagues, but remember that nothing about their journey says anything about your progress.
Keep your eyes on your own paper. One step at a time. That’s all that matters.
