Naomi D. Nakashima on Overcoming Self-Doubt: How to Conquer Imposter Syndrome and Write Your Book with Confidence

Have you ever felt like a fraud, even when you've achieved success? You ever look at those achievements and diminish them somehow?

Kind of like when someone tells you that you’re a good writer and you dismiss it because they’re your friend or your parent or your sibling or partner, so of course they have to tell you you’re good.

Imposter syndrome is an internalized feeling of inadequacy, despite external evidence of success. It's common among high-achievers and can affect writers in particular.

What is Imposter Syndrome?

Imposter syndrome is a psychological pattern in which individuals doubt their skills, accomplishments, and talents and have an internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. Those who experience imposter syndrome often attribute their successes to luck or external factors rather than their own abilities. Even in the face of  external evidence of their competence, they remain convinced they do not really deserve the recognition or accolades they receive.

For writers, this imposter syndrome often comes with a feeling that they don’t have “the right” to write the story they want to write.

Why it's important to overcome it in writing

As you can imagine, trying to write a story while at the same time feeling like you don’t have “the right” to tell that story can lead to a lot of complications. Add to that the fact that writing often entails a level of vulnerability, and any feelings of imposter syndrome can be exacerbated quickly if not addressed.

Writers often put themselves out there with their ideas and stories, facing criticism and the possibility of rejection. When we believe that we are imposters or that our success is undeserved, we become less likely to take risks and share our work with others. This can hold us back from achieving our goals as writers and hinder our creativity. In order to be successful as a writer, it's essential to learn how to recognize and overcome imposter thoughts so that we can write with confidence and authenticity.

Strategies for Recognizing and Challenging Imposter Thoughts

One way to recognize imposter thoughts is by paying attention to the language you use when talking about yourself and your writing. Do you often use negative self-talk or minimize your achievements?

If so, try challenging those thoughts with evidence that proves them wrong. For example, if you think "My writing isn't as good as other writers," look for positive feedback from readers or editors who enjoyed your work. And remember the phrase “facts over feelings.” Looking at this evidence that your writing is good won’t do you much good if you turn around and rely instead on your “feeling” that it wasn’t deserved for some reason. Instead of focusing on your feeling about the feedback, focus on the fact that you got the feedback.

Additionally, try surrounding yourself with supportive people who believe in your abilities as a writer. They can offer encouragement and constructive feedback that will help build confidence in your skills.

By recognizing these common imposter thoughts and developing strategies for overcoming them or even proving them to be wrong, you can break through your mental barriers and focus on your craft with clarity and confidence. 

Building Confidence as a Writer

Writing a book can be a daunting task, especially when you're plagued by self-doubt and imposter syndrome. So let’s work on some ways to build that confidence back up!

Celebrate your successes

When you’re feeling vulnerable and inadequate, it’s pretty easy to see all the mistakes—the low word count, the lack of writing time, the slow progress on your book. However, it's important to take time to celebrate your successes, no matter how small they may seem.

Did you finish a chapter? Did you receive positive feedback from a beta reader?

Celebrate these milestones and give yourself credit for the hard work that went into achieving them. Writing is tough, so it's crucial to acknowledge your accomplishments along the way.

Surround yourself with supportive people

Although writing can be a solitary activity, you don’t have to be totally alone. Surrounding yourself with supportive people can make all the difference in your writing journey.

Find other writers who understand what you're going through and can offer encouragement or advice when needed. Join writing groups or attend workshops where you can connect with like-minded individuals who share your passion for storytelling.

Learn from hurdles and setbacks

One of the most valuable things you can do as a writer is to learn from your hurdles and setbacks. When something isn't working in your writing - whether it's a plot point that fell flat or dialogue that doesn't ring true - take some time to reflect on what went wrong.

Start by asking yourself some questions: What were my intentions with this scene/character/plot point? What did I hope to achieve? And why didn’t it achieve that? Once you've identified what went wrong, brainstorm some ways you could improve upon it next time.

Other hurdles might include distractions, things like phone calls or family members vying for your attention. 

It's also important not to beat yourself up over mistakes or failures. Remember that every successful writer has encountered plenty of obstacles along the way - it's all part of the journey!

Instead, approach each setback as an opportunity for growth and improvement. By learning from your mistakes and staying focused on your goals, you'll be well on your way to overcoming imposter syndrome and writing the book of your dreams.

Find Your Writing Voice

One of the biggest challenges writers face when dealing with imposter syndrome is feeling like they don't have a unique voice. This can cause them to doubt their abilities and struggle to find the motivation to write.

I’ve been saying for years: some of the best writing ever only comes when the writer is so deep inside their comfort zone that theirs is the only voice they can hear. Embracing your unique voice means being willing to take risks and write from the heart.

Unfortunately, a lot of new authors hate their writing because they’re waiting for it to sound like someone else wrote it—some more authorly writer. Don't try to mimic someone else's writing style or be something you're not just because you think it will make you more successful. Instead, focus on what makes your writing stand out and embrace that as your strength.

Final Thoughts

Imposter syndrome is a common experience that many writers face. It can hold you back from reaching your full potential as a writer, but it's important to recognize that it doesn't have to.

By understanding what imposter syndrome is, identifying your own imposter thoughts, and building confidence as a writer, you can overcome this hurdle and write the book you've always dreamed of. Remember to celebrate your successes, no matter how small they may seem.

Naomi D. Nakashima is a bestselling author of nonfiction, a ghostwriter with 20 years experience, a trained psychotherapist, and a TikTok writing coach with thousands of followers who attend her coaching events and regular Q&As. Everything I Need to Know About Parenting I Learned from Watching Star Trek, her first book published under her name, became an international Amazon bestseller and stayed on the bestseller list for step-parenting and blended families for three years.

What I’ve Learned Along the Way

I’ve been writing and selling books for over twenty-five years, which means I’ve been lucky enough to work in my sweatpants and pjs long before COVID made working remotely so popular. I do have a new middle grade fantasy series out from Viking Children’s Books this month, and Skyriders publication has given me an excellent opportunity to pause and take stock. I’ve learned a great deal about the publishing business over the past decades, and these are just some of the things I wish I could have told a younger, greener me decades ago.

Be kind, share and give. People I helped along the way turned around and helped me, sometimes in the most unexpected ways. One debut author I’d met online was attending the same conference I was, but he had no dinner plans. I invited him to join me and my friends, and he has gone on to become spectacularly successful. Now he is wonderful about blurbing my books. A mentee I helped with her romance writing turned around and helped create striking, professional sell sheets for me. I always send handwritten thank you notes to the librarians who host me at their schools, and in turn, they often send me wonderful testimonials I can use on my website or line up more visits for me. 

Join professional writing organizations. There is SO much you can learn from folks farther along in their careers than you are. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel! For years I was writing sensitive, well-written and well-researched historical romances, but they were WAY TOO LONG to sell. Once I joined Romance Writers of America and won a critique from a published author, she set me straight. I trimmed 30,000 words from my manuscript and made my first sale three months later. Also, writing can be a lonely, solitary business, and attending conferences and chapter meetings gives you a chance to meet fellow writers who share your goals and friends who share your passion and ambition.  

Be patient and persistent. Very few writers become successes overnight. Very few writers sell the first project they submit. You’ve probably heard some of these stories. Kathryn Stockett was rejected by 60 agents before the 61st agreed to represent The Help. Madeline L’Engle’s classic story A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by 26 publishers, and Kate DiCamillo’s Newbery-winning Because of Winn Dixie was rejected 473 times. 

You have to be submitting your work to agents and publishers, and submitting frequently, to increase your odds of making a sale. Luck does play a factor. You never know when your work may hit an editor’s computer right after the marketing team asked for more school stories or more fantasies. Whenever I have a project out on submission, I already have the next project polished up and ready to send to my agent. 

Fortune favors the brave. This old Latin proverb is particularly true for professional writers. You can’t sell your work if you don’t take a chance and send it out into the world. I know a dozen fine writers who never actually sold books (and they probably could have) because their projects were never finished or never good enough, in their eyes. Deep down inside, some of these talented people were so afraid of failure, they never took the risk of trying to sell their work. 

Treat writing like a profession. If you take your writing seriously, then your family will as well. You have to protect your writing time and set boundaries. Spouses and kids can be trained (after some effort) to respect the time you set aside to write. If you know you write best in the morning, then find ways to protect those morning hours. Rachel Caine, the author of the wonderful Great Library series and sixty-two other books, used to get up before her day job and her family to write for two hours before going to work. If it’s important, you can find the time. 

Never stop working on your craft. You can always get better and learn from other writers and teachers. Some of the most talented authors I know still go to writing conferences and classes. They read books and blog posts on craft, and they are continually finding new ways to improve their writing. 

Know your goals and why you write. I’ve always written to be published and to make money, and that works for me. I recently joined a small-town writing group where most of the folks don’t wish to be published. But they are having a great time writing their memoirs and their thrillers to share with their friends and family, and that’s a valid reason to be writing as well. 

You need to LOVE writing! Publishing is a brutal business, and I often think it’s sad and ironic that the very sensitivity one needs to be a fine writer also leaves authors open to despair and depression. You may write a wonderful book, and yet it is quite possible that it will sell poorly or be ignored by your industry. Right now, many terrific books in my field of children’s literature are failing because some school districts are requiring (thanks to all those book challenges out there) that a book have at least two positive reviews from the biggies in our industry: Library School Journal, Kirkus, The Horn Book or VOYA. And yet those magazines don’t have as many reviewers as they used to, and some authors are lucky to receive a single review, much less two. 

Finally, be kind to yourself. Don’t compare yourself to peers who first debuted when you did. Some are going to be far more successful than you are. Others are going to be less successful, but writing is not a race, and it is not a zero-sum game. Envying others can only make you unhappy and less productive in the long run. Take pride in every book you finish. Be proud of every excellent sentence you write, and do your best to enjoy the journey. 

Polly Holyoke is the award-winning author of the middle grade sci/fi Neptune Trilogy (Disney/Hyperion) and the new children’s fantasy series, Skyriders, releasing from Viking Children’s Books this month. When she’s not tapping away on her computer, Polly enjoys skiing, hiking, and camping in the mountains.

How Has My Time in America Versus My Time in England Shaped My Writing

I write a historical crime series set in World War Two London which features DCI Frank Merlin, a Scotland Yard detective. I grew up in the Welsh town of Swansea, whose most famous literary product is the poet Dylan Thomas. After school in Wales and university in Cambridge, I have spent most of my adult life to date living in London. However I have enjoyed three extended stays in America. In 1972 I spent six months as an English Speaking Union exchange student at an American school in Pittsburgh. The school was called Shady Side Academy. My second spell in America was in the late eighties when I was in charge of the US office of a British company located in New York. My third extended visit was in the mid 90s when I had lot of business in America with the UK computer business I had started with a partner. This stay was not full time but I spent almost six months a year in Los Angeles for a few years. In Pittsburgh I lived in the home of a wonderful local family, in New York in an apartment on the East Side, and, in Los Angeles in a flat in Century City.

All three stays were very different experiences. In the first I was a school student, in the second a corporate employee, and in the 3rd an entrepreneur but I had a brilliant time on all of them. I was not writing at all when I lived in America, but maintained my childhood ambition to become an author one day. I travelled a great deal on all my visits. When my stay at Shady Side Academy finished, I bought a Greyhound Bus Pass for $200. This enabled me to travel anywhere I wanted for a month. The journey was memorable. I travelled in one go across America to Vancouver, sitting next to a friendly and fascinating Indigenous American for a good part of the journey. Then I went down to California. In San Francisco, the father of the family I stayed with pointed out his bearded next door neighbour. ‘He’s a film director. Just finished some gangster movie with Marlon Brando I believe.’ I then travelled across the South via Grand Canyon, Houston and New Orleans to Washington. There I happened to spend, I later found out, the night of the Watergate burglary. On my 80s stay in New York I travelled a lot on business, mostly to Florida, Texas and California. I travelled a little on my final stay in the nineties, but mostly on the West Coast or to New York, where my company was eventually taken public.

What impact did my time in America have on my writing? Well the overwhelming impact has come from reading American writers. At school in Pittsburgh, I first became acquainted with great noir masters from the thirties and forties like Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, James M Cain and Jim Thompson. When I was working in New York, I got to know another batch of great crime writers including Patricia Highsmith, Elmore Leonard, and John Grisham. Then when I was based in Los Angeles in the 90s I discovered Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, James Ellroy and Walter Mosley. Of course all of these great writers have their own styles, but collectively they all know how to keep the reader gripped from the outset, and generally write great dialogue which helps the story zip along. They also write superb plots. The British and Continental crime writers I was reading at the time had many merits but I definitely think this American punchiness stood apart. One favourite European author of mine who does match this American literary characteristic is Georges Simenon, the creator of Inspector Maigret. Simenon has much in common with many of the best Americans – short, pithy dialogue and a lean writing style.

So to the question posed: how has my time in America versus my time in England shaped my writing? The answer must be in the positive influence of those various writers listed above. I doubt I would have read anything like as many if I had not lived in the USA. In addition I have been much affected my experience of living in such a vibrant, exciting country. I think my time in America has made me much more daring in life than I might otherwise have been. I dared to write a book after all!

Mark Ellis is a thriller writer from Swansea and a former barrister and entrepreneur. He is the creator of DCI Frank Merlin, an Anglo-Spanish police detective operating in World War 2 London. His books treat the reader to a vivid portrait of London during the war skilfully blended with gripping plots, political intrigue and a charismatic protagonist.