Matt: Welcome back to Write Out Loud, the podcast about storytelling, writing, and literary creativity. I'm joined by my soulful, sensational, stellar, spectacular, and soothing Christina. Hello, my dear.
Christina: and soothing.
Matt: Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Don't you know?
Christina: soulful.
Matt: Well, we are touching on a topic we discussed a while back, imposter syndrome.
So we're going to talk a little bit more about how imposter syndrome manifests and really what it means. And this is going to be a two parter. This is all about laying the groundwork for what imposter syndrome is. And we're going to just D really dive deep into it and Hopefully by the end of this two parter, you'll have some practical tools that you can use and take away that help you deal with this because it can absolutely get in your way if you let it.
Christina: Yeah, it it'll stop people from writing because all they can do is sit in their imposter syndrome saying I'm not good enough.
Matt: Yeah. So you talked about a client of yours that it manifests, you know, in a certain way for her. Talk to us about that.
Christina: Well, there were actually two simultaneously that it was like really kind of in the same week. One posted on Facebook, she had just read Stephen King's new book.
Matt: Okay. Sure.
Christina: I need to get to the point where I can write like Stephen King, and in my discussion with her, she's only been writing for, you know, she's been writing for a lot longer, I should say. but she's actually only finished Like three or four books. She's never published anything yet. She's kind of working on Her craft and writing and getting them prepped and you know, she wants to take her shot with New York So we're concentrating on you know that aspect. So I said, how can you compare yourself writing for four years to someone who's been writing for 40 or 50 years, know, there's a big difference and you've got to allow yourself, you know, to get there. Simultaneously, like I said, it was maybe just a couple of days later, I got a call from another client who was upset because she's been reading a lot. and she said, the books are all crap and how can these people publish this crap and I can't even finish one book. You know, it was like, how do these people not know that they're writing crap?
And I said, well, they don't have imposter syndrome. And they don't because if you don't have imposter syndrome,
Matt: Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm.
Christina: going to publish your stuff and think it's great. And you know, some of the audience, it probably is great, but for someone who is working on their craft, like my client is, you're going to recognize. that your writing can be better. that's kind of where I want to start with imposter syndrome is the idea that imposter syndrome is not about what we've been taught that it's about, that you're yourself to someone else's writing. It's when you recognize that someone else's writing is better than yours.
It's not that you're an imposter. It is that I think subconsciously You're ready to work on your craft and become better.
Matt: Yeah.
Christina: So
Matt: Yeah.
Christina: and I were talking a little bit beforehand. something I don't know if I've ever said on this podcast, but every single one of my clients has heard it, every single one, because this is the basis of where my business in editing and author coaching from, is the fact that I have been in this. I've been in this publishing 25, 30 years now, that I have recognized the people that come and go. So these aren't, these aren't the Stephen Kings of the world. The Stephen Kings of the world are a different breed. They seem to
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: or just automatically do it. They improve their writing.
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: Every time they write, they challenge themselves to write a better book. They think of a new idea and, you know, go with it and write better. the people that fall away and stop publishing, I really believe it's because they stopped growing as a writer.
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: either, you know, were told by, and this is kind of a This is kind of a New York thing, not necessarily indie publishing.
You don't, you're not going to get it as much as you would with York. You know, once you make it and you're making multimillion dollar contracts and stuff, comes this little bit of arrogance that comes with that, where they don't think they need an editor anymore. They don't think they need to listen to somebody's critiques because I have made it,
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: I am making million dollars in contracts, what every single. One of those has forgotten is the fact that their readers are growing
Matt: Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm
Christina: they will grow out of your writing. We as readers, the more we read, the better we become as humans.
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: we have empathy, feel characters. We, you know, we grow as human beings. There isn't, there isn't. a bad person alive who has a stack of books, know, and
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: Otherwise they wouldn't be human beings. They would develop a conscience. They would, you know, would not be drunk on power. They would be, you know, drunk on humanity. They would be drunk on empathy. And those things do not make bad people. So yeah, we as humans, as readers, we grow and that's why you grow out of. Reading YA, you grow out of, or some of us do and some of us don't, we,
Matt: I was like, wait, wait, now?
Christina: we do grow and if the YA can't reach us at the level we're at, we will stop reading that YA, like I said, different with classics, with classics, and that includes the YA classics, you're going to find what you need to find even as an adult within those books, so I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about, You as a person, as a reader growing,
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: going to grow out of someone unless also grow with their writing. so for me, the reason writers continue to be a success, Stephen King, why you compare yourself to Stephen King is because, know, you see that growth. you want to have that growth. And so, this is something I mentioned in a podcast, but we never really delved into it that the idea of imposter syndrome isn't necessarily, I'm not good enough. It really is your subconscious saying rather that you can be good enough.
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: either have more to learn, more to overcome, more to grow.
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: And that you're ready for that because you don't recognize you're ready to grow until you're ready to grow and then it, something happens. You were telling me earlier that you learned from Mel Robbins that, working through an emotion, you let yourself feel it and then, you continue on, you
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: you know, let yourself feel it and you move forward. It's similar with imposter syndrome. You recognize that there is better writing out there, but you also recognize if you can recognize that better writing, you're ready to level up. You are ready to level up your writing. That doesn't mean you don't have work to do.
Matt: Yeah. Absolutely.
Christina: just means that, you know, you're recognizing that you can be better.
Matt: Mm-hmm . Yeah. And we were talking about just the various ways that it manifests, right? That.
Christina: Yeah
Matt: Each person is going to be different. You're going to have imposter syndrome for one person who is legit just comparing themselves to Stephen King, like your client and going, holy crap, I can never do that. And, you know, again, we'll talk about ways that we can kind of deal with all of these different manifestations, but there's others in the sense that there are some of those that are very afraid of what people might say.
So they are doing the work, but they're kind of like not ready to put it out there, right? Because they, again, they're just afraid of. They're not going to be good enough and people are going to say maybe mean things about them or, you know, just aren't going to like it and aren't going to enjoy it. Right.
There's the, the you had told a story too about another, actually, I think it was the same, the same client, right. That was saying like, these other authors are putting out crap and like, I don't understand. Right. But it, it may come from a place of, I'm not quite sure how to get this vision that's in my head
Christina: right,
Matt: on, Paper or ink or, you know, screen, whatever the case might be in a way that's clear to my vision,
Christina: right,
Matt: right?
And that I see all these others that can do that. I'm just like, well, it gets frustrating, right? So it's all the various ways that it manifests for each person. And it might be different for you listening. You might have. another take on that, of what causes yours, or the way that you look at it. But Christina's absolutely right, when you boil it down, it's, you've, you've already recognized in yourself that it is possible, this is now your chance to do something about it, to get you there.
And you have to be able to take that moment, take that breath, and realize what's happening, so that you can make that mental adjustment.
Christina: Yeah, I actually have a very good friend who says that if you have dreamed it You've already achieved it. You just haven't gotten there yet.
Matt: Mhm,
Christina: Like you don't come across a dream, a thought, an idea the possibility of that. Being a reality.
Matt: mhm.
Christina: So, in other words, for the sake of this podcast, we're, we're talking about storytelling. So, I have not once a client who didn't tell me that they had people living in their head,
Matt: Mm hmm.
Christina: that, You know, that stuff wasn't happening,
Matt: Yep.
Christina: you know, so if you've got that, and to my client's point, everyone that was, you know, turning out this crap now, I, I do have a thought that everybody who writes and publishes, there's an audience for you.
Matt: Sure.
Christina: So this client just happens to like better writing than, you know, some of the stuff that's out there. But I also think it's, it's also the universe telling her that there's an audience maybe that isn't being served
Matt: Mm hmm.
Christina: if she can get herself to get those stories down and here's the thing, when you were talking about not being able, you know, to get the story that's in your head onto paper.
You've seen the meme of the iceberg that has, here's the story in my head, you know, and it goes all the way down
Matt: Yep.
Christina: what I can write down. The thing is, is that this is where I fall back onto the Nora Roberts way of thinking is, you know, I can't fix a blank page.
Matt: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Christina: and that's not your only shot. You get a hundred shots after it's on paper. know, you, you have, you know, not forever because hopefully we would like to get this published and, you know, out the door so you can't take all your time. But you can take as many drafts as you need order to get it right. And that's again where it comes down to where you view imposter syndrome
Matt: Mm hmm.
Christina: oh, syndrome, everybody suffers from it at one point or another, which I believe to be true. But the idea that, okay, don't dwell on the imposter syndrome. Recognize that the imposter syndrome means you recognize the better writing. That means you can also recognize better writing in yourself. And again, it doesn't mean that you're going to write perfectly on the page the first time. It just means you are capable of growing as a writer, doing things differently.
Talking to a client a couple of weeks ago there was a missing piece in her story and we were kind of brainstorming and trying to think of, okay, what is the solution here. What's the door number three? And this little bit of a lightbulb moment because I had just finished binging Hijack on
Matt: Oh yeah.
Christina: you and I talked about that.
Matt: Mm hmm.
Christina: Hijack is what I call or what JJ Abrams calls mystery box. It means you aren't getting the whole story.
Matt: Mm hmm.
Christina: they kept asking, What's going on? What's going on? What does that mean? What does that mean? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what's going on either.
We have to sit and watch
Matt: You have as much information as I do.
Christina: And that's just it. That's the key right there is, you know, you, As a storyteller, don't always have to have all of the information in the beginning in order to start telling your story. And that's the same thing with working through imposter syndrome. Don't say, have to have the solution to imposter syndrome right now because I have to work through it and I have to feel it and I have to get past it. No, no, no, no, no. Just like Mel Robbins said with your emotions, sit with the imposter syndrome and say, okay. I can sit here and compare my writing to someone else. And as you said, I can be jealous, I can be mad, I can be angry, I can be all these things. But the one thing that you must not do is stay there.
Matt: Mm hmm.
Christina: You have to recognize at some point, if you see that your writing can improve, then you can work on improving
Matt: Mm hmm.
Christina: You know, again, it
Matt: Yep.
Christina: perfect the first time, if you continue to work on improving it, it will improve. It's, it's just like reading when you were a kid and you'd be pronouncing, words for the first time, either in your head or out loud while you're reading. you had to grow and learn new words. it's just like that with writing, you have to continue to write. And just in the act of writing in itself, you're going to start that may mean doing more drafts. Perhaps those people that hit publish that my client was like, this stuff is crap.
Matt: Mm hmm.
Christina: Well, maybe they didn't do two or three drafts. Maybe they did a draft and then sent it off to, you know, a copy editor, got the grammar fixed and
Matt: I think.
Christina: think everyone's stories can improve they do two or three drafts because you can layer things in, you can figure story out, you can, you know, really work a more story.
Matt: Mm hmm. Yeah, I think there are some people out there too that that go into this or their their manifestation of it is There's all these really great writers out there. There's no room for me. Like I can't you know, I'm mad about it I'm jealous about it I have this imposter syndrome because I'm afraid that There's just not that room for me anymore because there's so so many people already doing all this writing and it it just again It's not a zero sum.
It's not a zero sum game
Christina: Yeah.
Matt: Right. There's enough success for everybody. There's enough You enough room for everybody to get their voice out there.
Christina: and there is this thing that I think everybody kind of discounts is if you've got the story in your head. And it won't leave you alone. Maybe it's because you're the one that's supposed to tell it. And then, so we're going to take vampires, for example, everybody's writing vampires.
And so sitting there going, well, I've got this vampire story, but is it unique? Is it, you know, so interesting because in the same interview that sparked this conversation with us. Britt Marling is one of the creators of The OA
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: one of my all time favorite shows. And I hope to God someday that they finish it. I did not realize. So, she and her writing partner are very good friends with the Duffer Brothers, Stranger
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: creators. And Their shows came out basically on Netflix. And what I didn't put together, I mean, I'm, I'm a fan of both shows, but she said that so she's got this theory that, you know, stories come from someplace in the universe and we all kind of pull
Matt: The ether?
Christina: Yeah,
Matt: Yep.
Christina: And she said, because
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: how do two people? You know, two sets of people who don't know each other initially such similar stories. And I'm thinking similar stories. And she goes on to say, you know, both stories center around a psychic girl
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: who, you know, have a group of boys. Whom, you know, go on this journey with her. And I'm thinking, whoa, that's true. Both stories are centered around girls who are psychic, who have nosebleeds, who, have this group of boys. And again, hearkening back to the vampire, if you've got a unique story and you're the only one who is telling this kind of vampire story, then yeah, it's worth telling.
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: that's, that's just it. And, know, we're going to go into it more part two, but this
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: of why we're afraid to write stories the sense that we're afraid of what people will think
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: and, you know, that's what stops people from doing anything creative is you think it's already been done or you're going to compare yourself to someone else or, Many numerous things that stops you, from doing that.
One other thing I do want to say about imposter syndrome, because this really was sparked from first, an interview with Billie Eilish and her brother with, I don't even know what it was. It was, more than a year ago. And it was right after I had seen the Barbie movie. And she was talking about how, she was in a really bad place The creators of the Barbie movie came to her and said, we'd like you to write the theme song. Here's, you know, the themes in the movie. And wrote this day, I think it's, it is one of her best songs that she's written. She wrote it with her brother, of course. And you know, she was in that imposter syndrome place before that song came to her.
Cause she had won all these Grammys. She had won one Oscar at that time. Where else did she go at age 23? And the thing was, is that in a second interview I saw just recently within the last month that, she said she had no idea where she could go and now she's got two Oscars under her belt, even more Grammy's possibly on the way with, a ton of Grammy nominations as we, record this podcast. And what she said was she went a vocal coach. And so you think. I kind of hearkened Billie Eilish to someone like a Stephen King.
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: In the writing world where Stephen King has gotten the accolades. He's gotten the, you know, great stories, millions in sales and you know, all that kind of stuff.
Where does he go from
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: Well, Billy actually took vocal lessons
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: that she was able to hit notes. She never thought she could hit. And so with this new album that's been nominated for all these Grammys now, know, she hit notes she never knew she could hit. you know, again, coming back to that imposter syndrome, know, sometimes I wonder if imposter syndrome is there to spark a fire, light a fire under you
Matt: Mm-hmm
Christina: to become better.
Matt: Mm hmm. Mm
Christina: Eilish can say to herself, I've got of Grammys, I've got more nominations, I've got two Oscars under my belt, But you know what? think I'm going to take some vocal lessons. You know, I think that's just, to me, that was incredible. And I wrote down a quote from that interview because I, I just it was very insightful because she said it was gratifying, satisfying, and so fulfilling to learn you know, things about my own voice, that my own voice, I didn't, wasn't aware, that I I'm paraphrasing now that she could do. So yeah. So to me, imposter syndrome should light a fire under you
Matt: hmm.
Christina: to
Matt: 100%.
Christina: better.
Matt: It, it reminds me of, like, Tiger Woods. As good as he was at his prime, at his peak, needing, still needing a coach. Still needing somebody to help him improve his game, right? Tony Romo. All of these star athletes that have, to the same thing, have all of these Achievements that you would be like, okay, they don't, they don't, what are they, what could somebody possibly teach them?
Cause they've already done it all. And you know, Tom Daley, I mean, all of them have had coaches. So yeah, we're always, always in a place where we can challenge ourselves and learn more, which is a good thing. Should always feel good.
Christina: know, I don't, I don't know where this comes from, but for me it is, I always feel like, you know, I can grow and learn. I, even though I'm quote unquote expert on this podcast, that doesn't mean I'm still not still learning things. doesn't mean that, Simultaneously, I may teach things to my clients, but they're also teaching me things too.
Like I said, if it hadn't been for, client number one comparing herself to Stephen King and then two days later hearing from client number two saying, and that's when I went, Whoa, wait a minute. imposter syndrome,
Matt: Yep.
Christina: is, is something to take a deeper look at and not necessarily something bad. It's just a sign that you're ready. To do more.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah. So. Next week, we're going to delve into kind of the different manifestations of it in different ways that you can reframe your thoughts and different ways that you can sort of deal with that so that you can get a little bit more quickly to the point where you're saying, okay, I'm ready to do this.
I'm ready to push through to that next level and level up. Right? Because. That's what it is. It is lit. It's it's that signal. It's your check engine light in a good way Saying it's time to time to change time to move time to go
Christina: Yeah. And we're going
Matt: so
Christina: into Mel Robbins and Malcolm Gladwell
Matt: So stay tuned for that piece of it as we again Attempt to give you some more tools and things to help you Push yourself a little bit more and guide you through that as your emotional Sherpas that we are so excellent. Well, thank you very much, my dear. And that is going to do it for us.
So again, thank you for listening. Keep on creating. Keep on writing. Keep on pushing yourself to that next level because that's where you belong.