I do not believe I am a good writer.
And for that reason, I do not write.
I claim to. I call myself a writer and I base my profession around writing and I try to write things and get paid for it.
But I do not believe I am a good writer. The only time I ever think of my writing as good is after someone else has told me so. And although that has happened many times, what I remember more deeply are the handful of times I have been told I’m not a good writer. Rejected pitches. Not getting accepted into the fiction writing program at UVA. A boss not liking what I do. So many more people have said they liked my work but yet I only believe the people who didn’t are the ones telling the truth.
When I was four I wrote The Talking Cat, a short story, and I now remember this event as I’ve told it over and over rather than the way it probably happened. Was the story really good? Did I believe that when I wrote it? Did I email it to my mom because I knew that it was great and would lead to a long life of loving language? Or is that just what I tell myself, so it can be a cute quip about how I’ve always been a writer that I tell at a panel or on a podcast or in the future interviews that I practice in my head?
I do not believe I am a good writer.
And for that reason, I do not write.
I think about what I want to be writing all the time. I am constantly thinking about works in progress, about new ideas, about something I should try. My daily meditation sessions get derailed by this imagination. I try to note it thought; neutral the way Headspace tells me too but I only count two breaths before my mind wanders back. In those moments, I know that I have the next Great Play/Novel/Screenplay just rolling around on the bed of ideas in my brain. But I do not trust myself to write it.
I do not believe I am a good writer.
And for that reason, I do not write.
I think well, I can write and not share it, and that will still make me a better writer and then I think sharing it with other people is what makes you a writer and then I think Thinking this is only of value if it can be consumed by others? Sounds like very capitalist/white supremacist/colonialist thinking to me and then I think Or is the fact that I am scared to share it because I fear people won’t find it valuable the real capitalist/white supremacist/colonialist thinking and then I think this is imposter syndrome, internalized misogynoir, that is keeping me from thinking I deserve to take up space and put my work into the world and then I think but I know better than that because I read Black women and I wouldn’t be an outlier but would rather be inheriting a long legacy of brilliant writers like Ida B Wells and Phyllis Wheatley and Toni Morrison and Lorraine Hansberry and Gloria Naylor and Alice Walker and Lady Dane and Angela Davis and then I think did you really just dare to put your name in the same sentence as those women when talking about writing? and then I think well all cis white men think they can take up this space so I can too and then I think am I doing the same because I’m biracial and light skinned? and then I think I only read good writers so I take for granted the fact that not everyone is good at it and forget that I am talented and then I think what does it even mean to be a good writer? Isn’t it all subjective? Don’t we all just make it up and like what we like? What is talent? And then I think no, some writers are talented, period. and then I think
And for that reason, I do not write.
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