A thing about me is I love listening to people talk about how they write — the process, the struggle, the joy, the habits. All of it. I find it inspiring, but also weirdly comforting. This is exactly why when my friend and Bad on Paper co-host Becca recommended a podcast where authors (and all-around lovely humans) Ashley Winstead and Carley Fortune discuss their experience with writing and publishing books, I listened almost immediately. The episode is a great discussion in which both women are frank about their insecurities, imposter syndrome, and more, but there’s one part in particular I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I heard it.
I’m paraphrasing, but at some point in the episode, Ashley says something along the lines of: I believe every bad review I read about my books, and I doubt every good review. I’ve never published a book, but I’ve had the dream of publishing a book, so I’ve inevitably fantasized about what it would be like to: See your name in print. See your book in a store. Read a good review. Read a terrible review. Every time I get to the last part of this little imagination journey, my stomach drops, because I know exactly how it would go for me, that it’d be exactly like Ashley described. I’d believe the bad stuff immediately and entirely. And I’d doubt the good stuff without a second thought. I’d think: They must have questionable taste. Or they must not have read it close enough. Or… well, you get the idea. I’m like this with most things, if we’re being honest.
As someone who has long admired Winstead’s work, it (at first) felt truly inconceivable to me that she would think this way at all. She’s published multiple books in multiple genres (and at an impressive pace, too). She has countless fans and admirers, all of whom would likely jump at the chance to remind her that she is, in fact, great at what she does. She can look at any of her published work and know that there were editors and agents and publishers who all agreed on just that, that she’s talented, that people deserve to see her work. There were all these little confirmations that she was great at what she does and yet, it was still hard for her to believe it. Sure, I thought, I think the same exact way about myself when it comes to… well, anything, but if I had all of that — a shelf full of books with my name on them and a community of readers who were cheering me on, then it’d be easy. Then there would finally be enough evidence for me to believe the good stuff. But I know that’s not really true. I know it never has been.
When I graduated college with a dream job already lined up, I frequently told people who asked that I had just gotten lucky. It’s partially true, probably, that the stars really did align just so in order for that job to work out. And I’d be remiss to not mention that even having the financial ability to move to New York at 22 for said job was a result of massive privilege. But I also got that job because I spent most of the previous two years working from the company remotely, writing hundreds of articles, hunched over my laptop for hours. When one of those articles went viral, I said I didn’t know how it had happened — that it was a weird, random, and complete surprise. And sure, its popularity was all of that, probably. But it was also because I wrote about something that I knew people would relate to in a way that made them laugh. But I could never say that, that any of it was because I was clever or smart or could write. I always thought, well, in a few years when I’ve written more articles and been in the industry for a few more years, then I’ll be able to just think I deserve it all, that I did anything at all to really earn it.
Even the word ‘writer’ felt too good for me for… well, forever. Up until this year, really, I was everything else. I was a fashion and beauty editor, a freelance writer, a content creator… someone who just does “um, a lot of different things.” ‘Writer,’ by itself, full stop, always felt too greedy, too presumptuous, too big for me. It didn’t matter that I’ve spent the better portion of every single working day of my adult life writing, editing, or both, I didn’t feel like I was good enough to claim even that. I hadn’t written a book, then I hadn’t published one. I had a newsletter, sure, I wrote essays most weeks, but doesn’t everyone do that now? What’s so special about that? In the end, it was pretty simple. No one can tell you that you’re a bad writer if you refuse to claim the title at all.
I think I’ve spent most of the last 5 years trying to figure out how to give myself permission to… do anything. To feel good. To like my body, or at least not hate it so much. To make choices that are mine and mine alone. To do things differently. To write. To say yes. To say no. But now I wonder if maybe there’s a second part to the question, not how to give myself permission for any of it, but when. When do we allow ourselves to feel worthy of any of it? And is the answer always going to be: When we publish a book. When we win an award. When we hit a list. When we buy a house. When we have a kid. When we lose the weight. When, when, when.
There are these silent calculations we make with ourselves that we don’t even realize we’re going through until someone tells us something good about our work, or ourselves, and we shake our heads and brush it off, say not me. Not yet. And yet, it’s so easy to see and name the good in everyone else. To immediately understand exactly why some other person, a stranger, even, deserves a compliment or a good review or success or to simply feel good in their skin. It’s so much easier to give everyone else permission to feel good than it is to give it to ourselves.
I wish I could say I have some neat way to wrap this up, a conclusion I’ve come to that brings me clarity and peace, that leaves me knowing that the next time someone compliments me I’ll be able to accept the good as quickly as I can accept the bad. But I know myself well enough to know that these things don’t change overnight. It took years of practice — years of saying not me, not yet, not me, not yet again and again — to get to this spot, and I’m sure it’ll take years of practice to get out of the habit, too. To see in myself what has always been so easy for me to see in everyone else.