I am unsure about a lot of things in life. I am not a terribly confident person to begin with and throughout my life there have been a lot of things that I happened to be good at but never really pursued because I just wasn’t confident enough (I also didn’t have any supportive parental figure that urged me to go for my dreams or that told me I could do anything I set my mind to which is important for us dreamers). For instance, I was a really great singer. I say was because there was a time where I used to practice singing and do it daily as if it were a job I had to show up at because for me, at that time, being a singer was something I wanted to truly give a shot.
Your vocal cords are a muscle that need to be exercised, and I did so every day. I was in chorus and I even was a part of a little band (we never actually performed though lol) in high school. There was even the one time I signed up to do a talent show with a couple of girls and I was excited about it. That was when I realized that I did not have the confidence (nor the ability to overcome a little thing called stage fright) to sing in front of a crowd of people.
That same reason is why I never attempted the second thing I was passionate about doing, which was acting. I think I could have also potentially been a great actress. Lord knows I was dramatic enough lol. I had a good memory and would probably not have had a problem remembering lines. But lack of confidence and that stage fright thing, would be the reason that I didn’t go for that either.
Writing, however, was something that I did not lack confidence in. Since I was six years old, I knew that I was meant to be a writer. There was no way that you could have told me that I wouldn’t become a writer with published stories that were going to impact people’s lives someday.
I said all of that to say that of all of the things that I am good at, writing is what I am most confident in and yet I still have days where the waves of insecurity within my writing hit like a tsunami. I often question whether I just think I’m a good writer or am I actually good and it usually isn’t until someone else tells me how good something I wrote is that I feel like I might really have a reason to be confident.
As I am embarking on publishing my third novel (6th book total) soon I am feeling a touch of imposter syndrome. I feel it every time I get ready to publish anything. It’s like ‘well they thought this book was good but what if they don’t like this next one’ and then I find myself trying to live up to a lot of different expectations. Within the last two weeks The Weight of HER has had quite a few new readers and a couple of people have gushed over it and one person even said they could visualize it as a movie. I even made someone who is not a reader suddenly want to start reading.
It’s what most writers dream of hearing. That they impacted people enough to affect them emotionally and that they turned someone who is not a reader into one. Oddly enough, that stirs up my imposter syndrome even more. It makes me wonder if people are just saying these things to be nice. Can they just see the doubt all over my face and know that I need a little boost? I think to myself, what if I’ve just convinced myself that I’m a really good writer.
Then I stop spiraling and I sit down with something I wrote years ago and have a lot of separation from and read it and think ‘damn I wrote this’ and I know that I am in fact a damn good writer. Some days I think it’s just a matter of remembering the version of myself who was always confident and believed in myself enough to not need anyone’s validation. That version of me had never even heard of imposter syndrome and perhaps it would have been better if no one had ever mentioned that term to me.
Needless to say, here I am, about to put out into the world my next novel and I am a little terrified. But I guess maybe it’s better to have a little fear about it than to boldly think that everyone is going to love it and that’s it’s going to be some kind of best seller or something. I have no delusional thoughts about what this book will or won’t do. I just hope that it impacts and touches people in the same ways that I have been told my first two novels have. I hope that people get whatever message it is that they need to get from my book.
I hope that I never get to a point where I don’t feel the weight of the messages that my art can have on all who my art form touches. That is, after all, what art is supposed to do. Make us think. Make us a little bit fearful. Maybe even make us a little nervous. In the end, it’s meant to make an impact. May we all find our way to being less insecure about our art so that we can move forward with confidence and keep inspiring the world. God knows we need it right now.
Until next time… #BePurposeful #BeBold #BeConfident
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Jimmetta Carpenter
CEO/Writer/Editor
Write 2 Be Media/Write 2 Be Magazine
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