I'm not an expert - the imposter returns

At the Havant Writers' Circle annual general meeting on Wednesday night this week the committee were asking the members what they wanted to see in the next session's programme.  One of the suggestions made was a speaker on speculative fiction.

We kicked several ideas around, but in the end came to no decision over the right speaker.  I've never considered myself an SF 'expert', and wasn't willing to volunteer myself for that session.  I'm not comfortable representing the genre as a whole.

This led me to thinking about why I wasn't easy about that.  One reason is that I simply haven't read enough of the considered 'classic' books in the genre.  You know the ones : books written by white men during the 1950s to 1970s, a lot of which rendered women invisible.  

My choice not to read these so-called canon books is partly a personal rebellion.  I don't want to waste my precious time reading books which have no place for women as real people in them.  I want to read  books which contain people like me, that acknowledge that I exist.  And a great many of these 'classic' white men's books don't do that, hence my ignorance of the canon.

Part of my refusal to claim comprehensive knowledge of the genre is the Imposter rising again.  Whilst women have always written and read SF, they haven't always been so visible in the genre.  And that is fertile ground for the Imposter.  "You should know everything that's gone before you", it whines, "every trope, and every variation on if.  You should know every book written by women in the genre before."  But of course I don't.  Nowhere near.  So who am I to claim I know about SF?  Who am I to write it?

The answer to that is that I'm me.  I have my own individual take on those tropes.  And those tropes mutate and change in the hands of each generation.  The hero setting out on her journey is far more likely to be a heroine in my case.  The way to banish the Imposter is to tell it that I am producing something new and unique.  I am using my individual voice to tell my truth.  And along the way I might reinvent some of those old tropes to tell my story,

I've resigned myself to never being an 'expert' in the SF genre,  it would take too much time reading books with stories I hated for that.  Instead I need to follow the recent crop of successful women in the genre, and write my own story, follow my own concerns and passions in my work.  I need to follow in the footsteps of the women who are winning Hugo and Nebula awards for their reimagining so of the science fictional world.

I'll be happy not to be an 'expert' if I can emulate their success.