I think every writer is afraid that one day, they will wake up and face an audience of readers, and the readers will say, “I knew it! I knew you couldn’t do it. You’re not a writer, you’re just a fake!”
This was what I felt after several days of revising—and revising, and revising—the first few chapters of my novel. My writing group recently gave those chapters a critique—a simultaneously wonderful and torturous thing where they read something (gasp) and talk about what’s working and what’s not. One of the biggest pieces of feedback was that it seemed as if I didn’t know my protagonist. They couldn’t connect with him. They told me, “Give us more on his character. Let us know what’s going on inside his head so when he hurts, we hurt with him.”
It’s good advice.
I had no idea how to do that.
After deciding to go with their suggestions, I spent some time finding resources on how to write internal monologue (the sections in a book where you get to read the character’s thoughts). Over several days, I read portions of my favorite novels and started implementing the tactics of what I liked and what worked into my manuscript.
But doing this made me feel unworthy of being called a writer. I felt like a fraud, a thief. Here I am, years spent on the craft, and I can’t write a character’s thoughts? I have to get ideas from other writers about how to flesh out a protagonist? What is wrong with me?
Realizations (good ones)
These thoughts make me realize a few things:
I fall short in quite possibly every way imaginable.
I am not made to be so knowledgeable and skillful that I can do this all by myself.
Both seem negative. But they’re actually good things. They keep me humble when so often I’m the opposite. They make me realize I cannot rely on my own strength to write this story, to create these characters. And I need to remember this every time I sit down to write.
I don’t always feel worthy to be a writer. Yet I want to keep the journey until I see what the end will be. The path will be through mires and bogs of doubt and fear. But every writer goes through that—even the ones I study and admire. If everyone stopped when they didn’t feel worthy, I don’t think we would have anything good, true, or beautiful in the world.
Describing your own struggles is helping me see your character. You've got this Morgan.