Tinyletter #2 -- I made a website and it kicked my ass.
Hi!
Hi, to the fifty people who subscribed to my Tinyletter!
Here's what I have to tell you.
I made this newsletter last month, and then I made a website -- at the behest of a writing teacher, and about five minutes after I made both I spiraled out of control.
The fact that I was producing products that were, essentially, something like marketing tools THREW ME INTO A TAILSPIN. I started crying round the clock. Started working on the website, and then totally stopped. Stopped pitching new ideas for articles to online publications. Stopped working on my tiny food memoir. Wrote a small portion of the things I wanted to. It was like, for the first time, I was acting like I might consider myself a 'real writer.' I mean, real writers have real websites and real writers let people know what they've been writing, like it's some g*dd*amn gift to the world. Real writers talk about their projects like they will really come to be.
That wasn't me.
Except it's going to be.
As it turns out, an attempt at feeling more legitimate as a writer left me swimming in the garbage waters of the black lagoon of illegitimacy. But I'm still kicking my legs and flailing my arms. Likely I don't need to convince the world that I'm a legitimate writer. Likely I need only convince myself. (And maybe a couple publications, and/or an agent and/or a publishing house, at some point.)
I recently read this bit about imposter syndrome -- written by Neil Gaiman. Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things.
On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”
And I said, “Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”
And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did.
So I will forge ahead, whether or not I feel legitimate all (or any) of the time.
My new -- real -- website is up at www.thekellygreen.com
I have written two more Advice Columns to Myself since I sent out the last Tinyletter. You can find them here and here.
I wanted to be writing another advice column to myself right now but I'm not. I'm sweating my balls off in this small apartment, in this town in Wisconsin, where I now live. Thank you for being in this room called life with me.
(also. if you don't mind: do you all feel 'legitimate' in your lives? as workers? as hobbyists of craft? as anything? let me know, would you? where you find your own sufficient feelings of legitimacy -- or if we're all seriously doubting that we are legit at anything.)