The psychological cost of submitting

 I pitched a workshop for Eastercon this year titled Weathering the Submission Storm.  This week I've heard that they want me to run the workshop, so I'm getting my notes together.

As I've got further into submitting my work I've realised that the psychological cost of regularly engaging with the publishing industry can be huge.  And so I've decided that I'm going to focus on the psychology of submitting in that workshop.

Top of the list is a discussion about Imposter Syndrome,  When I looked up the original paper I saw it was published in 1978.  I really wish I'd known about it then.  At the time I was a qualified Solicitor thrown out into the legal world without any support.  I worked in the profession for twelve years, and all that time I felt like I was standing on a knife-edge, as if I was going to make a massive mistake at any minute.

I never did, and now I know that those feelings are classic Imposter Syndrome.  I think my lack of knowledge of the phenomenon, and the lack of support for me as a woman lawyer, played a huge part in my decision to leave the profession.

Something similar can blight our careers as writers if we're not careful.  We're usually working alone, and often not aware of how other writers are doing or of how they're feeling.  If we're regularly submitting short stories and always getting rejected the Imposter will whisper to us that we're just not good enough to make it.  For women especially that can so easily lead to us self-rejecting and ruining our chances.

It goes like this:  I have a story that might fit this anthology call, but I don't think it's exactly what they're looking for, so there's no point in submitting it.  Another variation is: I've submitted twelve stories to this editor before and he/she rejected them all.  So what's the chance they'll accept this one?  Zero, so I'll save myself the disappointment of another rejection and not bother to submit it.

Then we hear of other writers who have persevered with submissions and have managed to sell something.  That can trigger shame in us.  We've made hundreds of submissions over several years and not sold anything.  I often felt like that, until I connected with other writers on social media and discovered how common those feelings were.

And when I read that Dolly Parton has turned down being indicted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because she doesn't feel she's earned it (a Classic Imposter statement), seeing the struggles of even very successful people to overcome the Imposter makes me feel like I'm perfectly normal.