DESSERTS & DRAGONS
I gained an unhealthy amount of confidence in elementary school when I won a school-wide writing contest with a story about how I turned into a rabbit and discovered I was actually a bunny princess. I now suspect there weren’t a lot of submitted entries, but at the time I felt invincible. I kept submitting stories to all sorts of contests while in school and they kept winning these mini awards. In high school I decided I was good at writing and really enjoyed it, and that was when I decided I wanted to be a published author someday. It’s been fifteen years since then, and I’ve written countless full-length manuscripts that never saw the light of day, but I’m here now because I kept at it and had all that practice.
I think even the most fantastical world needs a tether to reality so that readers have something to relate to. Whether that’s a personality trait or flaw in your protagonist, the way your characters measure time, something about their technology, etc. I think that determines your audience: who can relate best to your work, and those people will gravitate more towards it. In my story, magic mirrors become an out-of-control form of communication, and I took the inspiration from my own sudden obsession with TikTok and seeing how it has influenced our world, our politics, and our inter-personal relationships. Interchanging commonplace things with fantastical things in your created world is the foundation to then build on, but there’s no limit to how creative you want to be with it.
I think Impostor Syndrome comes from a lack of confidence, and at some point, you need to stop comparing yourself to those who you deem more qualified and realize that if you’re there, you’re qualified enough and you’re meant to be there.
I earned an English degree hoping to one day get published. I kept waiting for this perfect book idea to come to me. I finally stopped looking with envy at people with books in stores and realized all they have that I didn’t is a good story they took the chance to pursue. I noticed cozy fantasy books popping up and decided it was the perfect time for this story to see the world. It was the confidence boost I needed. Some people get discouraged when they come up with a story idea and find one similar to theirs already published. Instead, they should think, well if people liked that book, they will love mine!
I think the business of publishing really tests people’s confidence. There is still some negative connotation that if an author isn’t traditionally published then they’re not “real” authors. That somehow the book isn’t as good, even if an author spent hundreds of dollars on editors and a cover. The truth is, if someone gives you money for your work, boom, that’s it. You’re a professional author. Having an agent and then a publishing firm choose you is such a huge validation but so is seeing my book on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, where I used to sit and study as a teenager and dream of someday seeing my book for sale. People across the globe are ordering and reading my book. How cool is that? If you wrote a book and dared to put it out there, you’re one of us, and you’ve done something amazing. You’re not an impostor, you’re an author.
Write. Finish the story. You’re not a writer if you don’t write. Put your head down and grind it out. Those who want to be published authors sometimes get ahead of themselves and start worrying about the business of writing, about marketing. Those are hurdles so far down the line they don’t even matter if a manuscript isn’t written and edited.
The other one that I think is very, very important is that not everything you write needs to be published. Like any art form, you’re not going to sell your first painting, or the first sweater you knit, or the first glass vase you blow. That doesn’t mean it won’t be a good story. But you need a lot of practice and writing demands lots of editing and rewriting. But if you start now, that version will come much faster than if you wait for perfection.
