Writing And The Imposter Syndrome

I love the sound of keys clacking on the keyboard, the external kind that yields a touch of resistance each time I press on the button. I look at the words form on the screen, words after words forming sentences, paragraphs, and stories.

Sometimes, I am stuck. I type, backspace, type again, stall and eventually walk away from the screen.

Other times, I force myself to sit, to spit it out even if I am telling and not showing even when the dialogues are stilted and the narrative cliched. I tell myself I can fix it if it is on the page, a part of me fears once it is on the page, it will be immortalized as my inability to tell the story.

The imposter syndrome looms larger than life behind me, it questions if I have a right to tell this story. It makes me pause when I write about things that I have no first-hand experience of. It cripples me when I question if a 10-year-old would use language like this.

Is this me or is this the character?

The questions seem endless.

I type The End. There is no satisfaction that comes from typing those words. It almost feels like it is The Beginning. The beginning of a rewrite, the beginning of fluffing, adding and bloating my sparse text.

I realize with a start that with this draft, I have four full books in various forms sitting on my computer, none of which I can proudly own up to writing except perhaps one.

On days like today, I question why I write.