I wrestle with feelings of inadequacy a lot of the time. I doubt myself and I definitely have imposter syndrome. When I studied for my PhD I had these feelings. But my supervisor told me he had imposter syndrome too and that most of the academics at my faculty did.
Thoughts like: Why am I bothering? No one cares! You aren’t good enough? Stop kidding yourself. You can’t write good stories.
Naturally, I don’t like this negative self talk. Just like I don’t like telling myself I look bad or old or fat. I’ve been doing that for years. My youngest daughter says it’s body dysmorphia. I look at photos and think, hell I looked good back then, but I thought I was fat, ugly, old. Hahaha!
I had very low self esteem growing up and I have fought long and hard to get where I am. You know the drill, one of many siblings, dysfunctional home life, child abuse and so on.
You think at aged 65 I’d know better. Sorry to disappoint. However, I try very hard not to let these negative thoughts win. I focus on what makes me happy and I write stories because I like to do that, I enjoy it. Well most of the time. It is not always easy to sit down and write. Inspiration doesn’t always come when you want it, even when you know the story you want to write. I think that’s where the negative talk comes in, when it is not easy. The evil part of my brain starts telling me to just go watch some screen, or go shopping, or do other things like craft. Believe me I feel negative feelings about my craft too. I can pick holes in anything I make and I know where I could have done better.
I just have a weird brain.
Yesterday, I was thinking about how long I’ve been writing. I started around 2000 so nearly 26 years. I didn’t get published until 2013 with Rayessa and the Space Pirates, but I had written a lot in that time. The funny thing is that Rayessa and the Space Pirates had been sitting in my hard drive for years. It originally started as a short story for a CSFG anthology called Elsewhere. I was working at the audit office and I thought it would be cool to have a space auditor and the story was going along very well, but when space pirates turned up, well I couldn’t finish it. So I wrote another story for Elsewhere called ‘Other’ and continued on with Rayessa and the Space Pirates as a short novel. Now, I did submit it to places but didn’t get anywhere so it lingered in the darkness until I went to my first Romance Writers of Australia Conference where several publishers were seeking submissions for ebooks. It was then I realised that my SF story also had a romance arc. So Escape took it and published it and the sequel Rae and Essa’s Space Adventures. I don’t know if I’d call it a success. I did earn royalties and it is my most pirated book judging by the Google alerts.
So, one lesson, don’t throw stuff away. Just because the stars don’t align, they might again in different circumstances. Anyway, time has moved on, the rights came back to me and now I have self-published my previously published books and my new stuff. This doesn’t mean I’ve given up on traditional publishing. I dabble but my life isn’t going to stop. A lot of things need to align with traditional publishing. It’s great when they do but they don’t always. If you try an agent, then they need to like what you are writing, have an idea of where to market it etc. Then, publishers need to like it too…but then there’s the acquisitions meeting where other people weigh in, the marketers, for example. I have had a few turn downs after acquisitions that said the Australian market was too small. With Ruby Heart a senior editor told me how much the liked it but then it didn’t get picked up.
Moral of the story is don’t give up. Haha! But also don’t listen to your negative talk. Write because that is what you live for. Sure, I’m going to give up one day. But right now I have ideas, I have drafted manuscripts that I’m tinkering with or trying to get an agent for. I have been writing for a very long time so I have a backlog. I hope to move some of these this year.
So I’m working on Gentleman Magician – a Cry Havoc novella and I have another novella planned and Book Five to write. Hopefully this year. I’m a bit behind on my plans (yes I made plans) but I hope to get there this year on these.
I have a Regency Romance The Tainted Lady I drafted before 2016. Sadly the market has changed and where I was going to submit that is a dead end. However, I did get some valuable feedback on it from a RWA competition and I’ve started revising it and I know what I need to do to get that dusted. Don’t be surprised if that gets published this year.
I drafted a young adult portal fantasy called Into the Dark Glass, that too is in a state of redraft. My then agent didn’t like it and couldn’t tell me why so in the intervening ten years I’ve been mulling it over and I have a restructure in mind. I tinker but haven’t got far. There is always a new project calling me away.
My Phd novel is currently been shopped around. I finished a revision of that in January.
I have a middle grade fantasy, Grandma Neebs: Through the Pantry Door, which I’ve shopped to Australian publishers and got nowhere. I really like this one because at its core its about family and love. Apparently there is a glut of middle grade fantasy at the moment but this has some horror elements. This will need an illustrator so that will depend on $ if I am to self publish it. Decision postponed.
Also in my hard drive is a feminist SF novella, which I want to revisit and maybe publish. And I have some Blood Crowd short stories that could be a collection if I wrote one or two more stories for it. Picture Vampires in Chicago with werewolves and gangsters. If there is more then I have forgotten.
I don’t write to trends or to the market. Some people do and it works for them. I don’t make a lot of money and recently even reviews are hard to come by. I’m writing what I love and I hope that readers like what I do. That’s what feeds my soul.
Sometimes what gets published has been years in the making. I hope to improve my productivity because I have more stories to write.
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Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing 