Fake It ‘Til You Make It vs Imposter Syndrome: The Showdown
By Julie Carrick Dalton | August 5, 2024 |
Me, walking into a cocktail party at a writer’s conference: I am confident in my writing ability. I have worked hard to improve my craft. I have insights and wisdom worthy of sharing. I deserve my seat at the publishing table.
Also me, walking into the same room: When is everyone going to figure out I’m a hack? I don’t deserve to be in this room.
Which one are you? Do you walk into a room full of writers and feel like you deserve to take up space in the publishing world? Or do fear being unmasked as an imposter?
Or maybe, like me, you do both.
Ever since I walked into my first writing workshop, I’ve been dangling from a pendulum that swings wildly between postures of confidence and crippling imposter syndrome. I believe it’s healthy to temper confidence with a bit of self-doubt, and I believe toxic self-doubt can be righted by remembering your true, honest accomplishments, even if they are small. I have trouble navigating the space between the two.
I’m still trying to figure out how to balance the confident fake-it-til-you-make-it mindset and imposter syndrome, but I’ve learned a few strategies that help me navigate the highs and lows.
Last month I turned in my third novel, The Forest Becomes Her, slated for publication in early 2026 from St. Martin’s Press. I’m already hard at work on my fourth novel, which is also under contract. Six years ago, I would have been giddy to know I would publish a novel. If someone had told me there would be four (and hopefully more) I would have passed out from joy.
But I also would have been skeptical. Why would anyone publish my novels? I’m a hack, I would have thought.
When I started working on my first novel manuscript, I embraced the fake-it-til-you-make-it approach to the publishing world. I believed in my book, but I didn’t have any relevant experience to include in a query letter. I looked at my unimpressive resume, and, instead of giving up, I decided to fill out my CV, one line at a time.
As I continued working on my novel manuscript, I entered contests. Flash fiction, short stories, novel excerpts. So many contests. Most of them led to disappointment, but I won several. I entered the wins into my scant author bio. Award-winning writer.
I submitted widely to literary journals, and, along with a pile of rejections, I received a few scattered acceptances, although, admittedly, they were all from smaller journals. I added these publishing credits to my bio. Published fiction writer.
I contributed essays to numerous websites that accept guest posts and wrote book reviews for a few websites. I was a blogger and book reviewer.
I volunteered to lead some small writing workshops. I was a workshop leader.
None of these minor successes involved platforms like Pulitzer or Ploughshares or The New York Times, but they were legitimate, hard-fought wins, and I was proud of them. I was making small inroads.
After a few years, the bio paragraph in my query letter began to feel respectable. I, however, wasn’t impressed. None of the lines in my bio were false. They weren’t exaggerations. I had won several writing contests, published a handful of essays, reviewed books, published short stories, and taught writing classes. Did it matter that the platforms were lesser known? Did these small victories matter?
I chose to believe they did. All the work I was doing was in service of improving my craft and making my novel stronger.
I doubled down on my fake-it-til-you-make-it philosophy. If I wanted to succeed as a writer, I needed to believe in myself and value my own work. I needed to project to the world that I believed in what I was doing, even if, in private, I doubted myself.
All of my relentless submitting, pitching, and guest blogging was going on in the background as I did the real work — revising my novel. I continued reading widely, taking writing classes, and seeking feedback from readers and writers I trusted.
I pitched workshops at regional and online writer’s conferences, most of which were unpaid gigs. But I took them all seriously. I worked hard to ensure the classes I taught offered value to the attendees. I prepared for every session as if I were teaching a class at Harvard.
Building on my thin credentials, I started pitching to larger publications and placed some essays and book reviews on national platforms. Relying on credentials and references from the workshops I had volunteered to teach, I began pitching classes to larger national conferences that I wasn’t sure I was qualified to apply for.
Fake it til you make it became my mantra.
I finished the novel, and thanks to all the ‘faking it’ I had a reasonably solid bio to include in my query. I started sending my manuscript out to agents.
Remember that version of me who walked into the cocktail party terrified of being unmasked as an imposter? I’m here to tell you the insecure part of me is alive and well.
When my dream agent called to offer representation, my incredibly embarrassing response was: “Are you serious?” I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t scream with joy. I said, “Are you serious?” I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that an agent liked my book. I still cringe every time I remember this.
At the moment I should have been proud, the moment I had been dreaming about and working so hard for, imposter syndrome emerged and I doubted all the work I had done.
Now, as I work on my fourth novel, I’m trying to do better. Rejections still come, and they still sting. And I continue throwing spaghetti at the wall. This spring, I was rejected from a residency I really wanted. Shortly after, I was informed my second novel, The Last Beekeeper, was longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. In May, Bread Loaf rejected my application for a position as a Teaching Fellow. That one hurt a lot.
But the same day Bread Loaf turned me down, I received an unsolicited invitation from Harvard to speak to their creative writing graduate students. The invitation took the sting out of the rejection.
As I sat there simultaneously licking my Bread Loaf wounds and celebrating the Harvard invitation, I reflected back on the past six years of faking it, attending workshops, entering contests, and applying for fellowships, residencies, and teaching positions. When I started sending out those contest entries and pitching story ideas, somewhere deep down, I honestly believed I would be an author one day. I also believed I was not good enough to make it in the cut-throat world of publishing. I firmly believed both things.
I chose to work hard, bide my time, and fake confidence in the face of doubt. I have thrown so much spaghetti at the wall. Most of it slid down into a pile of goo at my feet. But some of it stuck.
Was the Harvard invitation a sign that I finally made it? I wondered. Could I now stare down imposter syndrome and finally tell it to Fuck off?
Absolutely not. Within a few days, I received a rejection for a grant I wanted.
And so it goes.
If you struggle with imposter syndrome (who doesn’t?) I recommend trying to embrace the fake-it-til-you-make-it posture for a while. Stand tall when you enter that cocktail party. Act like you belong there because you do. Take an objective look at things you have accomplished, including the tiny things. Own them. Celebrate the wins. How can you build on them? Can you leverage a small opportunity into a bigger one? And leverage that opportunity into an even larger one?
When you receive a rejection, give yourself a moment to be sad, then let it go and move forward.
If you happen to see me at a writer’s conference, please know that both versions of me stand in front of you: the confident writer and the imposter waiting to be exposed.
For me, the pendulum continues to swing. Faking confidence and suffering through imposter syndrome. The difference, however, is that I now recognize the arc of that pendulum. When things get hard, and imposter syndrome seems to be winning, I hold on tight, knowing that I will swing back in the other direction.
If I hang on long enough, maybe one day I’ll fully trust that I’m no longer faking it. Maybe I never was.
Which one are you? The confident writer or the imposter? Or are you, like me, a mix of both? How do you combat imposter syndrome? How do you fake it until you make it?
Julie Carrick Dalton is the author of THE LAST BEEKEEPER, longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and WAITING FOR THE NIGHT SONG, a Most Anticipated book by CNN, Newsweek, USA Today, Parade, and Buzzfeed, and an Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best Books of the Month. As a journalist, Julie has published more than a thousand articles in publications including The Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, The Hollywood Reporter, and the Chicago Review of Books. A Tin House and Bread Loaf alum, and graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator, Julie holds a Master’s in Creative Writing and is currently on the teaching faculty of Drexel University’s MFA program. She also teaches Climate Fiction to undergrads at Tufts University. Julie is a frequent speaker and workshop leader on the topic of Fiction in the Age of Climate Crisis at universities, libraries, museums, and conferences nationally and internationally. Mom to four kids and two dogs, Julie is an avid skier, kayaker, open-water swimmer, gardener, and wannabe herbalist. Her third novel, THE FOREST BECOMES HER, is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press. You can connect with her on Instagram @juliecdalton, or at juliecarrickdalton.com.
Excellent post. Thanks, Julie!
Hey Julie–You’ve gotten me thinking this morning (always a good thing). It’s been almost four years since I decided to self-publish, and in hindsight I can see even more clearly what a pivot point that decision has been. After pursuing a traditional deal for so long, I reached the point where I had to decide what I really wanted. I could’ve shelved the work and sought to write a “more publishable” book. Or I could choose the work itself. Work which the publishing industry had already deemed unlikely to gain the popularity necessary to sell well (evidently a good call).
A grasp of the slim chances for gaining acclaim and/or economic viability were built into the choice. There’s no correct choice, of course. It’s up to each of us. Connection with reader is worthy of striving. As is economic viability. But most days I find my choice to be freeing.
Thanks for getting me thinking, and congratulations on your hard-won success! Next time I run into you at a conference I will only see an awesome human. Looking forward to it!
I think choosing the work itself was the only way to go. Imagine Picasso’s agent wandering around the studio, saying, “No. Nobody’s buying minotaurs this spring, and everybody up in Paris has started putting the eyes on the side of the head. It’s a cliché. Why don’t you do another harlequin?”
Julie, my friend, always wonderful to discover what you’ve been doing…and it is a lot. Congrats. My life is calmer, but I am always writing, posting on my blog, and forever reading. Have I published my FOREVER novel yet? No. But I am querying and have not given up. My daughter just went hybrid and her work is wonderful and will appear in the fall. I count my “writer blessings”, post my blog every Sunday, and will always be A WRITER….sending a hug, Beth
Hi Julie! For some reason *cough, cough* I was once drawn to a book at a library’s used book sale on this same topic. For my 25 cents, the big takeaway for me was that impostor syndrome is much more common among people of high intelligence, who are cognizant of the fact that what they don’t know is much greater than what they do. Add that to the notion Julia Cameron put forth in The Artist’s Way that an artist is always reaching for higher understanding, but that when they get there, “there” disappears, and I think you have a pretty good profile of most of the writers I know: an intelligent person, aware of what they don’t yet know, who is always yearning for greater mastery. To me, that sounds just as it should be. xo
Hear, hear, Kathryn. I believe Freud addressed this very point. If you aren’t uncertain about you’re doing, you’re not doing anything interesting–or creative. And the disappearance of “there”–exactly.
I think Lee Child said once that nothing is as bright and shiny as the beginning of a new book–and the next book begins with trying to return to that feeling of great possibility when you’re left with what you were actually able to accomplish, falling short in your own eyes, the last book no longer being what it could be but (merely) what it is.
Thank you, Julie, for addressing this can of worms in such an insightful and encouraging way. As for “faking confidence,” I’m reminded of the story by Kafka, “The Silence of the Sirens,” which is short enough to quote in full:
Proof that inadequate, even childish measures, may serve to rescue one from peril.
To protect himself from the Sirens, Ulysses stopped his ears with wax and had himself bound to the mast of his ship. Naturally any and every traveler before him could have done the same, except those whom the Sirens allured even from a great distance; but it was known to all the world that such things were of no help whatever. The song of the Sirens could pierce through everything, and the longing of those they seduced would have broken far stronger bonds than chains and masts. But Ulysses did not think of that, although he had probably heard of it. He trusted absolutely to his handful of wax and his fathom of chain, and in innocent elation over his little stratagem sailed out to meet the Sirens.
Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing has never happened, still it is conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never. Against the feeling of having triumphed over them by one’s own strength, and the consequent exaltation that bears down everything before it, no earthly powers could have remained intact.
And when Ulysses approached them the potent songstresses actually did not sing, whether because they thought that this enemy could be vanquished only by their silence, or because of the look of bliss on the face of Ulysses, who was thinking of nothing but his wax and his chains, made them forget their singing.
But Ulysses, if one may so express it, did not hear their silence; he thought they were singing and that he alone did not hear them. For a fleeting moment he saw their throats rising and falling, their breasts lifting, their eyes filled with tears, their lips half-parted, but believed that these were accompaniments to the airs which died unheard around him. Soon, however, all this faded from his sight as he fixed his gaze on the distance, the Sirens literally vanished before his resolution, and at the very moment when they were nearest to him he knew of them no longer.
But they–lovelier than ever–stretched their necks and turned, let their cold hair flutter free in the wind, and forgetting everything clung with their claws to the rocks. They no longer had any desire to allure; all that they wanted was to hold as long as they could the radiance that fell from Ulysses’ great eyes.
If the Sirens had possessed consciousness they would have been annihilated at that moment. But they remained as they had been; all that had happened was that Ulysses had escaped them.
A codicil to the foregoing has also been handed down. Ulysses, it is said, was so full of guile, was such a fox, that not even the goddess of fate could pierce his armor. Perhaps he had really noticed, although here the human understanding is beyond its depths, that the Sirens were silent, and opposed the aforementioned pretense to them and the gods merely as a sort of shield.
I absolutely love that you asked, “Are you serious?” when your agent offered representation. That’s the best. And while you might cringe to think back on that, I bet your agent loved it, in large part because it shows humility. I’m not an agent, but I am a person, and as a person, I will take “humility” over “arrogance” any day. After all, humility suggests an earnest willingness to grow, to learn, to listen, to lean on others, to laugh at oneself along the way. All good things, and especially important traits in a writer.
Thank you for this lovely post, Julie.
Julie, your post resonates greatly. Thank you. I just finished a lovely book: Living with Contradiction by Esther de Waal. It’s a meditation on the Rule of St. Benedict (which I’ve also read) but Waal’s book makes it more accessible to a layman. Benedictine spirituality is all about living with the tensions and contradictions we face within ourselves–the need to be alone vs community; being content vs striving for more. And it applies to the writing life as well, faking it vs making it. The truth is, we never make it. There’s always more. As our choir director says, if you’re not improving, you’re getting worse. And it’s the same with the writing life. I’m always writing something because it is how I make sense of things. How blessed we are to having this writing life, where we get to explore ideas and stories and share them with others. Congratulations on Book #3 and more!
Great post. I’ve been there.
But I’ve given up imposter syndrome.
I’ll be an author when I’m published. Or never. In the meantime, I’m a writer; I write and query. I write what I can. I query what I hope will be a satisfying experience for readers. If I can’t find an agent or a publisher who’ll try to sell it, I’ll always be a writer, but never an author.
I write because I can’t think of anything better to do. I don’t write great literature, I write mysteries and detective stories and retell myths. I hope some agents and publishers will think some readers will find them entertaining and worthwhile and try to sell them.
I’m not an imposter, and I don’t fake it. I may never make it (be published), but I can live with that. I write because I’m a writer and I can’t think of anything better to do.
I don’t think you were faking it. You were making it, one step at a time. I don’t know if it helps to remove the “faking it” part of the saying, and focus on the steps to making it, but it might. Nobody starts as an expert. We all work toward it by little steps and occasional big steps and sometimes even steps backward before we get turned around again.
Julie, I had to look up imposter syndrome to know all about it. I’m a retired NP in psychiatry and it never came up in my practice. Plus, when I started writing years ago, I was co-authoring books. In 2020, I started writing my own historical fiction book. Now, in 2024, I finished the sequel, and it’s in my editor’s hands. Starting to write late in life (now 85), imposter syndrome never surfaced. I was too busy learning to write, and rewrite, and taking a copyediting class. Moving up to being a self-published author. With an awesome team; editor/proofreader and formatter. And a cover designer. You can choose to be anxious, depressed and doubt your abilities. Or, you can keep writing and get better and better, which leads to confidence. My goal is simple, write and self-publish. Not even thinking in terms of faking it till I make it. That’s a mind downer. A bad cliche. With limited money to back my writing, I’m going the marketing route solo. Happy to have friends, family and virtual blogger friends support my writing efforts! Life is good at the computer bringing stories to life. 📚🎶Christine