Impostor, part two.

“Oh, you don’t want to fit in all the time, do you?” said the teacher, the doctor, the mother, the friend. And every time she said “no, of course not! Standing out is much better than fitting in, I don’t want to be like everyone else.” But inside, a traitorous little voice whined, “but I only want to stand out when I’m doing something everyone is impressed by! The rest of the time I want to fade away into the background.”

‘Standing out’ has never been exactly my forté.

Showing off - now that’s a different kettle of mice. When I was about five I wanted to be Ariel so badly I insisted my whole family sit in the garden and closed their eyes so they could hear me singing my little lungs out but weren’t actually looking at me. When I started a new primary school aged six I was terrified up until the point my teacher asked me to read to the class because she’d cannily realised I was pretty good at reading out loud and therefore I impressed my classmates and built my confidence. The book, by the way, was about Billy Blue Hat.

I’ve always been happy to dive in and show off when things are going well - I’ll cheerfully talk about how many books I’ve read from any given list because I know I’ve probably read more than the average bookworm, and I’m happy to volunteer for special projects at work because I picked a job I knew I’d be pretty good at so I’m unlikely to mess it up.

On the other hand… I can’t ride a bike, you know. I’m 30 - and the reason I can’t do it is because the first few times I tried it I wasn’t very good at it, so I gave up. Actually, that’s not strictly true - I can stick things out and get better at them, but only if I can do it in private. So, the real reason I gave up learning to ride a bike is because it’s really difficult to learn indoors, and I felt like everyone was judging me, laughing at me - so I gave up.

That’s one of the reasons I don’t drive, either - there are actually a few (my migraines hit quick and affect my eyesight which seems like a bad thing when you’re in charge of a vehicle, plus I live in London), but one of the reasons is that I gave it a go and wasn’t naturally brilliant at it. I was constantly worried about what the other drivers on the road thought of me; I’ve seen how my parents get impatient with learner drivers and I just thought… nah, I don’t want the criticism.

I also remember the exact moment, during an A Level Theatre Performance exam, that I decided I wasn’t going to do Theatre Studies at university. I’d always been fine at learning lines and doing basic acting, but when I tried to go on stage at the wrong moment because of nerves I thought ‘shit, if you do that again everyone will laugh at you’, so I stopped doing performances. I’m terrified of ever being invited on live radio or TV in case I accidentally swear (and I don’t actually swear that much day to day, although I grant you, this blog might persuade you otherwise).

I’ve mentioned before that I can be quite anxious sometimes. Sometimes it’s entire days, sometimes it’s specific things that bring it on - like, for example, the idea of going onto social media to suggest people buy a book I’ve written, or submitted a story to. Take the recent post I put up about the Dark London anthologies: on my blog, which I have no idea how many people access, I was happy to talk about how proud I am etc - but on Twitter, I was all…

This book is for charity! That’s the reason you should buy it, not because I wrote a thing for it but because it’s good for charity!

I obviously believe I can write. I wouldn’t submit to competitions or anthologies if I didn’t believe I have some aptitude for telling stories. I don’t think I’m the best writer in the world, but I do think worse drivel than I write has been published in living memory. But apparently, what I don’t think is that anyone should buy anything I’ve written, or tell me they’ve read anything I’ve written, or, or, or…

Jesus, what kind of author is going to succeed if she’s afraid of marketing her own books?

I think the issue is that I feel like an impostor. I’m not middle class enough to be published, right? But also, I'm too middle class to be telling stories that need to be told; my stories are just for fun. But who am I to say my stories are worth reading? That they’re fun for other people? And does it even matter? Shouldn’t I be happy to just do it as a hobby and not worry about money?

Would I feel better about my writing if everything I did was to help a charity? Honestly, probably. That would assuage the debilitating guilt I feel over how self-indulgent a hobby it is. And then I get cross with myself - you know, it’s ok to be self-indulgent sometimes and frankly writing a book is less so than many, many other things I could be doing!

I need to learn how to unfold myself, to take myself out of the background, just for snippets of time.

I need to take my own advice and stop letting myself believe in my own impostor.