Imposter Syndrome and the Long Winter

It has been entirely too long since I’ve written an update. 2020 was crazy. 2021 has been… busy.

In November 2020, I participated in NaNoWriMo again, this time starting a completely new novel: A modern witch fantasy with themes of love, found family, self-love, and environmentalism. It also contains action, spooky graveyards, and cozy romance vibes. This is wildly different than anything else I have written. First, it’s modern, second, it’s written in first person, which has been a new adventure, and third, I put some of my own challenges into the page. I call it my heart novel. This is my mood board for that project:

Then winter hit, and I hit a wall. The long months of isolation got to me, the short days, the cold. I had lost both my stepfather and my aunt in 2020, and the holidays hit HARD. I tried to write, I set goals, and even when I met some of them, I was plagued with pervasive self-doubt. A few writer friends (honestly, I don’t know where I’d be without them) kept encouraging me enough that I at least made some progress every month on both my modern witch fantasy and another stand-alone heist fantasy that I’m working on.

But I mostly spent the reading, trying to clumsily homeschool my kids, dealing with real-life challenges, and fighting off the seasonal blues, combined with existential dread. It was a dark few months.

At the urging of a writer friend, (again, she’s amazing), I entered several contests with my YA high fantasy, which I had stopped querying to significantly revise. The first was 10 Queries, which I got into. I got a lovely review of my query and first five pages from the lovely Jay Whistler, shown here:

This boosted my confidence enough to send out a couple queries to agents, something my imposter syndrome had been fighting me on. I was about fifty percent successful in getting manuscript requests. For me, that was huge! I also tentatively entered Author Mentor Match (AMM) and then Write Mentor.

AMM resulted in being invited to a writing group, where I’ve found many talented writers and a few critique partners. Write Mentor resulted in a manuscript request, which was another spirit booster that I needed going into spring.

The first day I found the first spring bloom in my garden, I felt a sense of hope I hadn’t realized I had lost.

I felt that I really needed to do something different, and I focused mostly on helping other writers. I critiqued other books and queries, edited, and beta read. I applied to go back to school. I worked on my editing website. And I applied for a job as a Community Librarian, which, on paper, I was unqualified for, and had no expectation of actually getting.

I got into school, and, incredibly, I got the job.

That terrified me. Like, I actually CARE about this.

This is me, before my first day of work, still unable to believe that I actually got the job of my dreams. (Besides, of course, being a writer.)

So now the long, cold winter is over, the sun is out, and everything is new. I have plans for the future, a new job that I actually care about, and I’m back to writing.

I hope that everyone who has struggled over the past year (plus) will find a way to come out into the light again, to hope, to plan, to create, to put yourself out there, despite what that nagging voice inside is telling you.