Healthy Living Practices for Writers – Silent Killer: Imposter Syndrome

By Mary Lynn Cloghesy and Jason Schembri

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Did you know that you have a silent killer within you? One that is capable of not only derailing your writing life, but also your profession, personal relationships, and pastimes? Recent research has shown that creatives are uniquely susceptible to this disease due to the subjective nature of their work, the solitary aspects of their craft, and the competitive landscape of the arts. A whopping 70% of writers will suffer from this affliction, including some unlikely characters. Consider what Dr. Maya Angelou has said about herself and her work, “I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’” She’s not the only one. Even John Steinbeck has cried, “I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people.” If the icons among us are negatively impacted by Imposter Syndrome, then what hope is there for the rest of us? Clearly, it’s critical to know what it is and how to deal with it in order to protect ourselves from this author interrupter. 

What is Imposter Syndrome?

While you may not know the term, I’m guessing you’re familiar with its symptoms. Ask yourself: Have I experienced persistent self-doubt or feelings of inadequacy despite evidence of success? Have I wondered if I was a fraud or feared being exposed as such regardless of my skills, qualifications or achievements? If so, you’re in the thralls of Imposter Syndrome. It’s a form of dysfunctional thinking that has been described as “chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that overrides any feelings of success or external proof of competence.” This mental affliction plays on your fears, needling you with subliminal suggestions, and causes you to question yourself, your talent, and your ability to achieve your dreams. It’s subtle, insidious, and stalking you right now. In fact, it’s such a common experience among writers that it could be considered an epidemic.

While Imposter Syndrome will cause you to hang your head in shame, it has many other faces. It will drive you to adopt the behaviours listed below rather than address its root causes, especially when you are feeling vulnerable, such as during the query process or in the midst of critiques. Here are the masks it wears:

• Perfectionism – Setting impossibly high standards and feeling like a failure when they aren’t met.

• Overworking – Trying to compensate for perceived inadequacies by working excessively.

• Discounting success – Attributing achievements to luck or external factors rather than talent, skill or effort.

• Fear of failure – Avoiding new challenges due to the fear of being "found out.”

Diagnosing Imposter Syndrome

To combat this disease, you must diagnose it correctly, but how do you know if you’re simply having a bad day or struggling with Imposter Syndrome? Frequency and consistency are important factors to consider, as are patterns in your thinking that reveal deep-seated worry and self-sabotage. Telltale signs that you are suffering from Imposter Syndrome include the following:  

• Negative Self-Talk

• Do you often think, "I’m not a real writer," even though you’re increasing your word count regularly and actively creating new works?

• Do you believe your work isn’t good enough, no matter how much you revise?

• Perfectionism & Procrastination

  • Do you keep rewriting the same passages because they’re "never good enough"?

  • Do you delay submitting work or starting a project because you fear failure?

• Dismissing Accomplishments

  • Do you downplay praise or attribute success to luck instead of your talent and hard work?

  • Even after recognition (awards, nominations, publication), do you feel like you don’t deserve it?

• Fear of Being "Exposed"

  • Do you worry that other writers, editors, or readers will figure out you’re a fraud?

  • Does the idea of publishing or speaking about your work make you anxious?

• Comparing Yourself to Others

  • Do you feel like other authors are "real writers," but you’re just faking it?

  • Do you look at their success and think, "I’ll never be as good as them"?

• Overworking to Prove Yourself

  • Do you push yourself to exhaustion, believing you must work twice as hard to deserve success?

  • Do you avoid celebrating milestones because you can’t accept you’ve really earned them yet?

What can you do about it?

Recognizing Imposter Syndrome is the first step. Take off the mask, look in the mirror, and say out loud, “I am a writer. I am accomplished, I work hard, and I deserve my success,” then notice how you feel. Free write about it. The key is to manage self-doubt rather than attempt to eliminate it. Leading expert, Dr. Valerie Young, author of The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, has stated, “The only difference between people who feel like impostors and those who don’t is that the impostors’ thoughts stop them.” Here are some practical steps: 

• Acknowledge It & Call It Out

• When you hear that inner voice saying, "I’m not a real writer," or "I don’t deserve this," challenge it. Ask yourself: What evidence do I have that this is true? Spoiler: There isn’t any. Use the mirror to reflect what is real instead. Write an affirmation and say it out loud to yourself, then get back to your writing. Your work and readers are waiting.

• Reframe Your Thinking

• Pay attention to your inner dialogue. Instead of saying, "I just got lucky" try: "I worked hard, improved my craft, and took advantage of my opportunities." Whenever doubts and fears come up, remind yourself, "Every writer doubts themselves—this is normal, but it doesn’t define me."

• Keep a “Proof” Folder

• Create a digital or physical folder where you save:
  ✅ Positive feedback from editors, agents, or readers
  ✅ Good reviews or contest recognitions 
  ✅ Personal milestones—finishing a draft, hitting a word count goal, getting shortlisted
  On tough days, revisit these to remind yourself that your work has real value and made a positive impact.

• Stop the Comparison Game

• It’s easy to look at other writers and feel lost or behind, but their journey isn’t yours. Even bestselling authors struggle with Imposter Syndrome! Instead of comparing yourself to others, focus on your progress. The only person to compare yourself to is you. Also, cheer others on knowing they need your support as much as you need theirs.

• Write Through It

• Fear and self-doubt thrive in inaction. Keep writing, even if you don’t feel "good enough" that day. One of the best ways to grow as a writer is to write. The only way out is through.

• Share Your Struggles with Fellow Writers

• Imposter Syndrome relies on silence. Talking about it with other writers can be eye-opening—they probably feel the same way! Other authors will have tips as to how to beat this too, so reach out to your critique group or friends in the field to gather collective wisdom. 

• Celebrate Your Wins (Big & Small)

• Finished a chapter? Got positive feedback? Submitted to an agent? Celebrate it! Recognizing progress helps rewire your brain to see your success instead of dismissing it. If in doubt, go for a quick win: write a flash fiction piece, watch a video on the art and craft of writing, read one of your favorite authors. Your choices are endless.

• Accept That Doubt is Normal

• Even established authors battle Imposter Syndrome. The trick is to acknowledge the fear but not let it control you. You’re not an imposter—you’re just a writer pushing past your perceived limits.

Healthy Living Top Tip

Like most diseases, it’s a coordinated approach over time that promotes healing. While there are some actionable steps included in this article to help you diagnose and manage Imposter Syndrome, you may need to go deeper. Our top tip for this month is to be curious about what’s happening, especially if you are struggling, and to acknowledge that you are not alone. 

Don’t allow your internal worries to cross over into reality and kill your success. One thing that is unique to writers is we get to breathe life into “real” imposters (excuse the oxymoron), villains and victims, then wipe them out with the keyboard. Take advantage of this unique ability and feel emboldened to vanquish your internal imposter. Eradicate the disease at its source. Your story awaits.

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Authors: Mary Lynn Cloghesy & Jason Schembri. Mary Lynn is the founder of the Leadership Literary Lab (https://leadershipliterarylab.com), and Jason is a long-term weight loss specialist (https://jasonschembri.coach) Together, they host a luxury writing retreat in the Canadian Rockies. 

This Crazy Writing Life: Defining Irony In The Time Of Covid

By Steven Womack

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In this month’s installment of This Crazy Writing Life, my original intent was to start where I left off with last month’s column on eBook distribution and explore the options and possibilities of print.

That was the plan, but as someone once told me, we make plans; God laughs.

So before we move onto more serious stuff, a little sidebar.

The last half of August saw something we’ve never seen before—two major mystery conferences were taking place in Nashville in back-to-back weeks. Killer Nashville, of course, is now a major regional conference that draws writers and readers from all over the country, if not the world. The week after KN, Nashville hosted Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, the largest gathering of mystery writers and fans in the world.

This was, to paraphrase a conversation Joe Biden had with Barack Obama after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, a big effin’ deal… This has literally never happened before. For two weeks or so, Music City became the center of the mystery world.

I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about something. I’ve been pretty transparent about my struggles in the writing career arena. When I left academia in 2020—after the college where I’d been teaching for twenty-five years quite literally closed its doors and went out of business—I’ve been trying to resurrect a writing career that was once almost promising.

So I signed up for both, with great relish.

I was thrilled when I was assigned four panels at Killer Nashville. At Bouchercon—where the competition for panels is somewhat stiffer—I was assigned one. This felt great. It was like the old days, back in the Nineties, when I was a full-time mystery writer and making a living at it.

Then, ten days before Killer Nashville opened, I woke up with a fever about five o’clock in the morning. I tried to slough it off, but after a few hours, I decided to take a Covid test.

Positive…

Everything went downhill from there. I’m an old guy, an immuno-compromised cancer survivor. When I still tested positive and still sick after a week, I cancelled Killer Nashville. A week later, same results.

So long, Bouchercon.

And want to know the irony of this? One of the panels I was scheduled to be on at Killer Nashville was “Handling Successes and Setbacks As A Writer.”

The universe has a weird sense of humor. I had to cancel my appearance on a panel about handling setbacks because I had one of the biggest setbacks in quite awhile.

Define irony…

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So let’s talk about print books and how you indie pub them. We’ll start with a few basic assumptions.

First, most indie pub authors I’ve ever met make most of their sales (and, therefore, most of their money) from eBooks. So if you want to delve into the print arena, just be aware that it’s an awful lot of effort and cost for the least return. For many writers these days, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. On the other hand, there’s nothing like the feel, smell and heft of a real book.

Second, the technical aspects of producing print books are way more complicated and demanding than eBooks. Why? Because eBooks are marked by flowability, which means you don’t have to typeset them. The text just flows out of the ether and into the e-reader. There’s no set trim size. The user actually determines the font, point size, leading, and measure. Actually, in real life whatever device the user is reading them on determines these factors by default and the user can change them if they’re savvy enough.

(As an aside, don’t know what point size, font, leading, and measure mean? Then you’ve got an even higher technical hill to climb…)

Third, be aware that the print landscape is a little more complicated if you hope to sell print books in both brick-and-mortar bookstores and Amazon. No brick-and-mortar bookstore will order a print copy of your book from Amazon and set it on their shelves. For one thing, most bookstores hate Amazon with a fiery, searing, scorching passion. More than that, bookstores depend on wholesale discounts and returnability for survival and Amazon’s not about to help them on that front. So what this means is you’ve got to upload one set of files to Amazon and one to a wholesale book distributor. And then you hope to high heaven the same files will work for both outlets.

Fourth, unless you have a garage the size of a warehouse and deep pockets, you’re not going to go the old school route of finding a book printer to print up a few thousand of your books and then ship them to your home address. Chances are they’ll sit in your garage until the mice find them, at which point you’ll have a bunch of fat, happy mice on your hands. And if you do get lucky enough to sell a few of them, you’ll be buying cardboard shipping boxes, packing tape, and bubble wrap, then loading up the old SUV for a trip to the Post Office or UPS. If you’re not up for that, then you’re going print-on-demand, or as it’s commonly called “POD.” And that, as they say, is a whole nother ball of wax itself.

When I decided to tackle indie pubbing print books, I had a built-in advantage. Early in my career, I spent about a decade working in publishing in New York City and Nashville. I worked mainly in art departments, where I typeset books, ads, catalogues, brochures, and a ton of other stuff. But what I mostly did was interior book formatting/typesetting. I’ve probably either typeset or supervised the typesetting of a few hundred books over the years.

So those terms I threw at you earlier? What do they mean?

A font is the particular typeface you’re using. There are hundreds of typefaces and families of type, but all fonts can be broken down into basically two types: serif and sans serif. Serif typefaces have a small stroke or curlicue attached to the larger, main body of the letter. Sans serif typefaces don’t have these add-ons and the letters are just lines. If you bring up your word processor and type a few words in Arial, then type the same few words in Times Roman, you’ll see the difference. Most books are typeset in serif typefaces, except for certain types like manuals, guidebooks, nonfiction, etc. Most fiction is set in the more traditional serif typefaces, which tend to have, for lack of a better term, a classier look to them.

Point size is literally the physical size of the type. There are 72 points in an inch. Most books are typeset in around 12-point type, with some variations. Really long, thick doorstopper books might be set in point sizes less than 12. Down around 10-point type, though, they get mighty hard to read.

Leading is the distance between the lines, called that because years ago when books were typeset by hand, the typesetter inserted thin strips of lead between the lines to separate them. Most books are typeset with an extra few points on top of the point size. The point size/leading is usually expressed as a fraction, i.e. 12/15. When there’s no extra space between the lines, as in a book set in 12/12 Times Roman, that’s said to be set solid. And for anyone beyond the age of twelve, they’re really hard to read. Almost no one does it.

Measure is the width of the line, which is directly related to your trim size and margins. You want to have some kind of margin on each page; you don’t want the type to run from one edge to the next. You’ve got to design it just right to hit that visually appealing sweet spot. You don’t want too much white space or too little around your page of text. This also affects your page count, which is critical.

So there in just over 300 words is a summary of my decades in typesetting. But there’s a lot more to learn. Know the difference between a widow and an orphan and why you want to avoid both? There’s not room here to get into that, but Google it. It’s fascinating stuff. Trust me.

Once you’re ready to get into actually formatting a print book, where do you start? The easiest way is to get a dedicated app for typesetting, but truth is you can typeset a book on Microsoft Word. I’ve done it. It’s a PITA and I won’t do it again, but when I started six or seven years ago, there wasn’t much else out there. Vellum typesets books, but as I mentioned in an earlier column, Vellum only works on a Mac platform.

And for many years, the go-to software package for interior book design (and many other forms of graphic design) was Adobe InDesign. It does everything and does it well. But like all things Adobe, it’s expensive to start with and requires decades of study on a lonely mountaintop in Tibet to master it (okay, decades? Maybe I’m overstating a bit…).

Kindle Create is free, as is Reedsy’s Book Editor app. I don’t know much about them, though. There are a few other paid packages. Just Google them and get reviews.

I wrote last month about Atticus, which is produced by a company here in Franklin, Tennessee called Kindlepreneur. In the past year or so, they’ve added a print typesetting function to what has emerged as the best eBook formatting software in the business. Every review I’ve read of it is spectacular, but since I haven’t indie pubbed a book since their print functionality went online, I’ve got no personal experience. But if it’s like everything else Kindlepreneur does, it kicks butt and takes names.

We’ve barely scratched the surface on the technical challenges and considerations of print book formatting and design and I’m already out of space for this month’s edition. So I’ll stop here and next month we’ll move on to the differences between an eBook cover and a print book cover, how you make a cover work, and then onto the challenge of making book distribution outlets work for you.

As you’ve seen, This Crazy Writing Life is a grand adventure. Thanks again for playing along.