The Real You

You know how it is when you write something one day and it’s like you’re in a trance and can hardly remember actually putting the words down, except you know you must have because there you are rereading it and you know you had been the only one typing. That’s the most magical and satisfying experience, and it also happens to be when your best stuff comes, the kind of work, if someone else wrote it, you’d think, “Boy, they really know what they’re doing.” Maybe you even think that about yourself briefly, like you’ve finely cracked some precious writing code, until you remember the semi-trance you’d been in, and now you’re not so sure.

Because the next day you might sit down and think, “Okay. Let’s fall into that trance!” And you promptly don’t. You just sit there, a thing of clay without ideas, a muggle in a stolen wizard’s hat, and you realize you haven’t cracked anything. If it goes on like this for too long, you might start thinking this is the real you, this lump, this pretender, this fraud. You’re embarrassed by the kind of things you believed about yourself. You thought for a moment you were special. That was foolish.

Such are the roots of what we call the Imposter Syndrome. All artists contend with it. John Lennon once said, “One day I think I’m God almighty, and the next I’m total crap.” When I’m not writing, when I’m just making tea or buying gas, I often have no awareness of where those rich ideas come from. I’m focused elsewhere, on the world, on what needs taking care of, and I can feel how if I had to create something right then, I wouldn’t know where to start.

Except that guy taking care of stuff, the domestic Bill, the busy Bill – I don’t think of him as the real me anymore. Certainly not the whole of me. He’s more like a useful avatar, a maid, butler, and lackey I’ve employed. Meanwhile, the man at the desk, the one waiting and listening, the one clearing his mind of all the crap he doesn’t really care about, the one curious but not certain what he’s curious about, the one to whom the idea soon enough comes – that’s me complete and who I’ve always been.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com