The Writer's Dilemma

A free-write session on legitimacy, imposter syndrome, and the blurry line between content and craft

Ugh… I haven’t written an essay for Substack this week and my self-imposed deadline is in 22 hours. My essays lately have felt a little dry and impersonal. Today I’ve got some errands to run but I’ll have to sit down tonight and write a thousand words on something, and so far I’m stumped.

I’m still working out what my writing style is, who my targeted reader might be, and even WHY I’m writing these in the first place. The closest I can get to the WHY is that I want to see myself as a “real writer” but I don’t know what that really means. How do you measure that in this day and age, when anyone can pick a platform and drop a few lines?

What defines a person as a “real writer”? Is it third-party publishing? Is it reader feedback? Is it peer accolades? Is it :gasp: getting paid based on word count?

The nature of being a “professional writer” has evolved, especially in the internet era. The barrier to entry is simply an internet connection and a login, but the sheer flood of words pouring across our timelines is proof that nearly everyone is a writer in some capacity. And yet one thing remains true, the majority of us who self-identify as writers still have a crippling sense of gnawing insecurity we call imposter syndrome.

Legitimacy. Identity. True Authorship.

Where are the lines between posting, journaling, content, and craft, and who decides?

I’ve been a content writer for decades in a transactional way. SEO keywords, press releases, product blurbs. That kind of writing comes with measurable success: clicks, conversions, contracts. There’s comfort in those metrics. But when I sit down to write something personal, something that actually matters to me, there are no predetermined audience demographics to target or analytics to check. Just a blank screen and all the silence I can handle.

Every time I face this screen I vacillate between wanting to spill my heart all over the keyboard and waxing poetic with advice on life nobody asked for and I’m probably not qualified to give anyway. I start to tell a story and worry about casting a spotlight on its characters in a way that might make them uncomfortable if I ever hit “publish”. I fight the urge to self-edit the uglier truth from my experiences so it packages up prettier and casts me in a better light than what really happened. I work to wrestle meaning and insight out of the most obscure details. And I’m never satisfied with the results.

I’ve been putting words to paper, and eventually screen, my whole life, and yet I still hesitate before calling myself a writer out loud, as if someone will jump out from behind a bookshelf and demand to see my credentials. I say lines like “I’m just a blogger” or “My work isn’t that deep” like one kind of writing has more value than another, and mine is at the bottom of that scale.

But here’s the contradiction that keeps me going… keeps me publishing; when I encourage people to read, I don’t measure their worth by what’s stacked on their nightstand. I don’t discount them for reading Stoker over Steinbeck. I don’t judge if the story is in a graphic novel vs. an epic tome. All reading has value, and that is a belief that is deep-rooted in my soul.

So why, as writers, do we immediately discount ourselves and doubt our own work? Why do we look for outside validation to affirm our identity? Those external markers and milestones of reassurance that the “real writers” we look up to have achieved before us? I may not have an agent, or a book deal, or a shiny plaque on my wall, and I definitely don’t have a fat advance account, but I do have an extensive body of work and a blinking cursor on my screen that keeps calling me back.

I write, therefore I am a real writer.