The Thursday! Newsletter 1-34: Impostor Syndrome and the Factory Floor
Volume 1, Issue 34
I'd like to revise and extend my remarks about Impostor Syndrome.
I've always liked that phrase -- "revise and extend my remarks" -- ever since I heard members of Congress use it in speeches they wanted put in the Congressional Record. Each one would utter it with an entirely serious formality, as if at any moment an ogre would smash through the wall and howl "NOOOO! NO MORE SILLY SPEAK!" and smash the podium and speaker into a goo that would still draw a six-figure pension until the heat death of the universe.
I did check and soo no ogres hiding in the bushes outside, so we're probably good to continue. If anything ogre-related occurs between now and the end of the newsletter, we'll just chalk it up to chance. Cool? Cool.
So. Impostor Syndrome. I wrote about this a couple of months ago and came to a conclusion that didn't entire satisfy me. That's not to say it wasn't useful. I've used my own advice (squash Imposter Syndrome by remembering that every great artist builds on to and borrows from other artists) a couple of times, but it never seemed like the best way to go about it. I got a couple thoughtful replies that also caused me to do some thinking. Since then, I've talked with a couple friends who've wrestled with particularly bad cases of IS. All of that got me thinking down a different path, which begins on a factory floor. Stick with me here.
Imagine a factory. This factory has a manufacturing process that turns some raw material into a completed product that sits on the table in the market. Other companies make a similar product and have tables in the same market. The factory is relatively new to the market. As such, it hasn't made a lot of products - not nearly as many as several other factories that have tables packed with excellent products in the market. In fact, this factory only has a few. They do well enough, but the factory manager has a problem. He watches the products move through the manufacturing process every day and grows more and more discouraged. He comes down to the factory floor, plucks one of the products off the line and examines it closely. He then takes a product from one of the other factories that he bought the day before from the market and examines it.
His product is definitely not as good as the one he bought. It's not fully formed. It's not fully painted. Some of the cool things that should work well on it don't work yet. Worse, he can clearly see similarities between his woeful and misshapen product and the one he bought from the market. His heart sinks. People are going to hate his product. How could they not? It's a mess!
I'm sure at this point you're ready to point out to this poor manager that his comparison isn't fair. After all, he's comparing an unfinished product to a finished one. How could the unfinished product compete! The manager needs to give the process time to finish and then he can make a fair comparison.
This, I think, is what Impostor Syndrome really is. Each of us gets to see not only our completed art but also the messy process that got us to that completed art. We have all those little snapshots of production in our minds and, when we thing of that thing we've made, we see all the snapshots. When someone tells us how much they love our story, we say something like "Oh, you should have seen it two weeks ago when I couldn't get the second half written!" But of course they shouldn't have seen that! They shouldn't have seen any of the process that got you from quite literally nothing at all to a completed, captivating tale. They are not part of the factory. They are the customers at the market. They get to see the amazing things you make, not the grinding, messy, weird, possibly magical process that gets them made.
And one other thing. The excellent and skilled is not inauthentic nor fake. The messy reverse side of a work of needlepoint -- the side you cover over with the back of a frame or a couple strips of masking tape -- is not the most real and authentic part of the work. It is the evidence of time and effort and a process and nothing more. You may show it if you wish, if it serves you as an expert crafter to do so. Plenty of companies give us little peeks inside their production process to show us they are every bit as excellent as they appear, but do remember those peeks are strategic and edited. Yours should be as well. You have no obligation to reveal the whole messy creative process in order to be "real". Show only what serves you and your art.
Okay. Back to the first point. I've now come to think of Impostor Syndrome as the push and pull between the product and the process. We look at everyone else's final products and we compare them to every snapshot we have of everything we make at every point in the process and our messy stuff comes up wanting. But of course it does. Every Apple computer would suck compared to, say, a Dell, if you snatched all those MacBooks off the production line in mid-process. They're not done. They're not ready. The comparison isn't fair.
I don't think there's a point at which we entirely overcome that push and pull. I do think we can work every day to make sure we push the process as far toward the fair comparison of finshed product vs finished product as we can. We can also compare our process to someone else's process as well if we want, but do be careful. Your process is yours. It has to fit you. You can't take someone else's process and make it work for you as well as it works for them. Though we can all be creative, each of us gets to "creative" in our own unique way because each of us is a unique person.
Still, we can all make sure we push the Impostor Syndrome as close to "fair" as we can get it. It won't last every day. You'll need to push back often and with determination. That's okay, though. We're all pushing back against it. We all deal with it. It's part of being a flawed and imperfect human. Some do better than others (I've a good friend who is great at it and I admit I envy her for it). We can all improve. Take comfort in the fact that you are far, far from alone.
Let your process work. Do your stuff. You're no impostor.
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What I Wrote and Read Last Week
"There Are 216 Steps to the Top of the Lighthouse", is an example of what happens when I get an idea in my head and start typing in search of the story.
When "Live. Laugh. Love." meets Taxi Driver, you get "Make Things Happen".
If you missed my guest appearance on the Write Now podcast last week, today is the day to listen!
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One Last Thing
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