I\u00a0have written 11 books and each time I think, Uh oh, they\u2019re going to find out\u00a0now. I\u2019ve\u00a0run a game on everybody, and they\u2019re going to find me out.<\/p>\n
. . . Maya Angelou<\/p>\n
I\u00a0had a moment of elation when I got my first ghostwriting job to pen a memoir\u00a0for chanteuse Diana Ross in 1993. \u201cAmazing,\u201d I practically sang to myself.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve been hired to write a book for a legendary diva.\u201d The elation didn\u2019t last\u00a0long. \u201cOh my God,\u201d I muttered under my breath a few minutes later, \u201cI\u2019ve been\u00a0hired to write a book for a legendary diva.\u201d<\/p>\n
Getting\u00a0the job is one thing but actually doing it is something else altogether. When\u00a0the Imposter Syndrome hit me, I climbed into bed and assumed the position. Covers\u00a0over my head. Shallow breathing. Heart pounding. In case you\u2019re fortunate to\u00a0have never come face to face with this emotional monster, the Imposter Syndrome\u00a0means that you doubt your ability to do something, anything, no matter how good\u00a0you are, and you fear being exposed as a fraud.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0lay there in the dark and asked myself, What did I just agreed to? What makes\u00a0me think I can pull this off? How long will it take them to discover that I have\u00a0no idea what I\u2019m doing?<\/p>\n
I\u2019d\u00a0had some experience at the time but it was minimal. Six months earlier, I\u2019d gotten\u00a0a deal from Simon & Schuster for my first book, \u201cAwakening the Healer Within,\u201d\u00a0about controversial healing practices in the Philippines. It did well and soon\u00a0after that, I\u2019d helped a renowned motivational speaker finish her book that was\u00a0wildly successful. Writing for myself and editing seemed to come naturally to\u00a0me but I\u2019d never ghostwritten an entire memoir. I was told that the singer had\u00a0fired her first writer. Should I tell her agent right now that they made a\u00a0mistake with me or should I just wait to get fired, too? The Imposter Syndrome\u00a0was in full swing.<\/p>\n
My\u00a0dread escalated the next morning when a Fed Ex delivery person dropped off two\u00a0large boxes filled to the brim with the diva\u2019s newspaper articles, modeling photos,\u00a0magazine spreads, film reviews, concert souvenir programs, and juicy gossip\u00a0about the Supremes. I was breathless when I stared at it all. What was I
supposed to do with this? How could I possibly sort it all out? The deadline was\u00a0terrifyingly short and I was practically in tears when I called my agent. \u201cShe\u00a0wasted two months with her first writer before she fired him. Now there isn\u2019t\u00a0enough time left to make the deadline, is there?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d\u00a0was her answer, \u201cbut no one is more capable than you. You write fast when you\u00a0need to, your brain knows how to organize material and when you get to the\u00a0deadline, they\u2019ll extend it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay,\u201d\u00a0I said, hung up the phone and started pulling things out of the boxes and\u00a0arranging them on my living room floor. \u201cYou can\u2019t do this,\u201d my inner critic\u00a0cajoled me. \u201cYou\u2019ve never done it before. What makes you think you can write in\u00a0Diana Ross\u2019s voice? The diva of the century. How audacious of you. You\u2019re a charlatan\u00a0and they\u2019re going to find out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Audacious?\u00a0Charlatan? My inner critic had quite the vocabulary but I did my best to ignore\u00a0it as I arranged the items chronologically. I was overwhelmed with doubt and\u00a0dread when I started, but I kept going. When I eventually met my client, conducted\u00a0live interviews and began writing, I stopped thinking about what I couldn\u2019t do\u00a0and focused on what I was doing in the moment. They extended the deadline two\u00a0weeks, I finished the book, it became a bestseller and I moved on. But the\u00a0imposter syndrome didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
This\u00a0condition isn\u2019t common only among us regular folks. The rich and famous suffer\u00a0the same malady, no matter how powerful they are. Lady Gaga said she still feels\u00a0like the loser kid she was in high school and she has to remind herself every\u00a0morning that she\u2019s a superstar. Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor is always
looking over her shoulder to see if she measures up. \u00a0<\/p>\n
So\u00a0when the terror hits, what do you do? You have choices. You can stop in your\u00a0tracks or you can ignore the destructive messages and get going. I know a woman\u00a0who taught people how to feel comfortable doing interviews on camera. She had a\u00a0lot of accomplished clients and in June of 1997, she was in London when she was\u00a0called to coach Princess Diana. It was a one of a kind opportunity but she was\u00a0so terrified, she let her fear stop her. She thanked them and told them she\u2019d\u00a0do it the next time she was in London. Two months later, the Princess died in a\u00a0car crash.<\/p>\n
Renowned\u00a0artist Georgia O\u2019Keefe said, \u201cI\u2019ve been absolutely terrified every single\u00a0moment of my life, and I\u2019ve never let it stop me from doing a single thing I\u00a0wanted to do.\u201d I kept this in mind as I wrote the memoir, reminding myself that\u00a0if I failed, it would be devastating but not terminal. I dug in and when I was\u00a0through and the book was successful, publishing editors called on me and I\u00a0created a thriving career. It was always challenging but I got to sit at the\u00a0dinner tables of some highly talented people and find out how they had become
so accomplished.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0I think back over my life, I see that the Imposter Syndrome was always there, but\u00a0each time it loomed over me, I somehow found the courage to move forward. In\u00a0the late sixties, I was cast as the lead actress in an independent film. I had\u00a0never acted but I agreed to do it. It was so demanding and I had so much to\u00a0learn, I was okay for a while, completely distracted. But the first time I
heard a playback of my voice, I was stunned. I had no idea I hated how I\u00a0sounded and I was certain they\u2019d fire me, but they had no reaction. We just\u00a0moved on.<\/p>\n
Having\u00a0a track record with my writing gives me some ammunition to manage the negativity\u00a0but it never disappears. I\u2019d written over a dozen bestsellers and I\u2019d edited a\u00a0load of manuscripts when I decided to teach writing classes. The doubt rose up.\u00a0I didn\u2019t trust that I knew enough to be a teacher and I was so overwhelmed, I
asked a close friend to be there for my first class so I could see her and feel\u00a0safe. I was tentative when I started but as we got further into the class, I\u00a0was amazed to see that I knew a lot more than I\u2019d suspected. I\u2019d had a long\u00a0career, I\u2019d come up against countless obstacles and I could easily answer any\u00a0questions that my students asked.<\/p>\n
While\u00a0no one is immune, it seems that artists often suffer with this syndrome because\u00a0they are creating something new, something that has never been done before.\u00a0When Igor Stravinsky composed the ballet, the Rite of Spring, and they performed\u00a0it for the first time in 1913, the audience exploded into a riot. Between the\u00a0level of dissonance in the score, the jerky movements of the dancers and the\u00a0rapidly twittering sounds from the woodwind section, the entire audience got up\u00a0and left the theater. It\u2019s a good thing that the composer didn\u2019t let that stop\u00a0him because The Rite of Spring eventually became one of the greatest symphonic\u00a0and balletic influences in the 20th century.<\/p>\n
If\u00a0you\u2019re paralyzed with fear and think you should stop or you don\u2019t deserve\u00a0praise for something that you\u2019ve done, remember what Academy Award Winner,\u00a0Jodie Foster said: \u201cI thought everyone would find out and they\u2019d take my Oscar\u00a0back. They\u2019d come to my house, knocking on the door, \u2018Excuse me, we meant to\u00a0give that to someone else. That was going to Meryl Streep.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The kicker here is that\u00a0Meryl Streep thinks she doesn\u2019t know how to act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u00a0have written 11 books and each time I think, Uh oh, they\u2019re going to find out\u00a0now. I\u2019ve\u00a0run a game on everybody, and they\u2019re going to find me out. . . . Maya Angelou I\u00a0had a moment of elation when I got my first ghostwriting job to pen a memoir\u00a0for chanteuse Diana Ross in 1993. \u201cAmazing,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2446,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445\/revisions\/2446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}