i
Me, on every third or fourth Monday morning: Why am I even in this job? Today is the day they find out they made a huge mistake and shouldn’t have hired me. Have I been here long enough to get any kind of severance? Am I ever going to get another job?
Me, on the occasional Tuesday or Wednesday: I’m a f@cking genius, OMG, watch me soar, eat my dust, I win!
Me, the next day: It was a fluke, I’m never, ever going to pull it off again.
Me, last Friday: Why are you thanking me for this? An unethically trained monkey could do this.
Me, today: Is it ever going to get easier? Seriously, at which point is my Super Ego going to let my Ego consistently feel that it’s competent?
Id: Never. This is why we should never listen to the Super Ego and just do what we want. Ice cream for lunch?
ii
“The worst people often think they’re the best. My dad calls it ‘talent dysmorphia.’”
Jack Danvers, Ted Lasso, Season 3, Episode 5
Does this make talent dysmorphia the opposite of imposter syndrome?
iii
One of the most devastating experiences of my life took place after the Calgary flood of 2013. It wasn’t the flood itself — that was awful in its own way, of course — but one of its consequences. One of the volunteers cleaning out our main floor carted out one or two (or five, I don’t remember) boxes of my 1990s and 2000s clippings, newspaper and magazine stories, early manuscripts. They were soaked because I stored most of them in cardboard boxes. And on the ground. I know. Don’t judge. You weren’t planning for a flood either.
I told him to toss them. Sean, who had perhaps a better idea than I did of how important “writing” and “writer” were to my identity, rescued them and spent three weeks drying them out. (This is also why we had such a magnificent divorce. Life hack for divorcing well: Marry a good person, and never forget that they are a good person.)
Most of the clippings were not salvageable. But some were. And I slogged through more than 20 years of my writing, from age 13 onwards, to try to figure out what was worth keeping.
Nothing. It was all crap. Especially the stuff from the 1990s. I wept. Who published and bought this crap? It was terrible. And, OMG, at the time, I thought it was so good.
Me, 2013: I’m never keeping anything I write ever again.
The Internet: Ha ha.
iv
Ok, some of it wasn’t utter crap. It showed… promise. But most of it was.
Pain.
Him: What you were writing in 1993 should be crap compared to what you were writing in 2013. How do you feel about what you wrote in 2015 now?
Me: Crap. Utter crap. I’m never, ever re-reading that first novel.
Him: Because you’re better now. Right? Wouldn’t it have been awful if, in 2013, you were looking at what you wrote in 1993 and wishing you could write like that now?
Yeah. Ok, that would be way worse.
But the other doesn’t feel that great either.
v
I don’t byline much anymore — it’s mostly ghost or corporate work. And I do a lot of it, so I can’t keep track, really, of what I wrote when. (Or for whom.) Sometimes, this happens:
Me: Ok, that source piece you sent me was brilliant. I basically just rejigged this and this, added this new development, and we can just use it again.
Her: You know you wrote that, right?
Me: What? I did? Let me look at it again.
It’s no longer brilliant; all I see are its flaws.
Id: Jane, baby, repeat after me: We do not listen to the Super Ego.
Me: But Super Ego has such a confident voice…
vi
The Dunning Kruger effect, if you’re not familiar, was first described by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. Dunning and Kruger’s thesis was that people with limited competence overestimate their abilities. Later researchers added the flip side: High performers tend to underestimate their skills.
Adam Grant’s treatment of it in Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know is pretty brilliant:
I spend much of my working and creative life in the Valley of Despair. How about you?
vii
Silver lining: On that occasional Tuesday or Wednesday when I know I’ve killed it… I know that I’m so good at what I do because much of the time I think I suck and so I work really, really, really hard to get better.
viii
Typical first date conversation:
Them: So what do you do for work?
Me: I write.
Them: Cool. So what do you do for fun?
Me: I write.
Them: Umm… and what else?
Me: Um… I read about writing. I go to workshops about writing. I teach workshops about writing. Um, and I read lots of fiction and stuff — but that’s also at least in part to study structure and rhythm and to get better at writing.
Ok, I also dance. But sometimes, when I dance, I wish I was writing.
ix
Me, on this Monday: Why am I even here? How many people did I totally snow to get this job?
Id: I thought we agreed we were not going to listen to Super Ego.
Me: We also agreed we’d never reference Freud again, but here we are.
Id: You need to take a break and write some high class porn. Come on. You know you want to.
Me: I need to write this brief and I’m too stupid to form a single coherent sentence.
Id: Close your eyes. Let me write for a bit. I have some ideas.
Me: Fine. I’ll be here on the floor crying.
A couple of hours later:
Me: This is not terrible.
Id: I win! Now let’s go have cake. And oh, oh, oh, I have the best idea for a story. Remember that asexual you dated until you found out she did 60 to 80 Tinder hook ups a year?
Me: She also liked spiders. I mean, she really, really liked spiders. And, she was a dentist. She really liked being a dentist…
Id: Can we write that story? Does she keep spiders in her office at work? OMG, yes she does, that’s how she decompresses between patients: She goes into her office and plays with her tarantula. And then one day, the spider gets away and…
Super Ego: We need to work on the brief.
Id: I’m writing the slutty asexual who loves spiders story.
Me: Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll be on the floor crying.
Ego: Hello? Anyone even aware that I’m here?
Id, Me and Super Ego: Shut up!
Image Credit: Julian Schultz, UnSplash
x
My back, eyes and brain all kind of hurt, so I’m lying on my belly on the office floor, not working on the slutty asexual who loves spiders story (but, actually, it’s not a bad idea, I should totally write that story one day).
Colleague walking by with a visitor: And that’s Jane. Never mind her, she’s a genius. The rest of us use desks like normal people.
For about five seconds, I believe it. Genius. Juice.
That’s all it takes to finish the damned brief.
Id: Can we write my story now?
Soon, baby. Soon.
xoxo
“Jane”
Nothing By The Book 