Impostor syndrome, self-doubt and the alchemy of belonging

So… perhaps you are thinking about enrolling on a Jericho Writers course – the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme, for example. You’re considering how the logistics would work, realising you can make it all happen and starting to get excited.

But then something disconcerting happens: you hear a whisper that won’t disappear. You may have met it before – in writing or in your life more broadly.

Who am I to do this?
What if everyone else is more talented, more educated, more real than me?
What if they find out I don’t belong here at all?

That voice is familiar to every writer I’ve ever taught or mentored, and it is one that I hear too. It’s part of what we term impostor syndrome. It’s the fog that rolls in precisely when you dare to make something new. And often, that voice doesn’t even belong to you. It comes in borrowed tones: an unsupportive friend, a disbelieving parent, a teacher who once said you’d ‘never make it.’ Perhaps it’s the lingering weight of class and education — the sense that stories are for other people, those who went to different schools, read the right books, had the right accent. We cannot deny that structural inequality is a thing, and deeply impactful.

The first lesson you must learn is this: those voices may live in your head, but they were put there by someone else. You can thank them for their contribution, and then quietly show them the door. Here are some suggestions for how you might go about it, drawn from my first teaching book, The Alchemy…

Name the impostor (and its chorus)

When you hear, You’re not really a writer, address the source of that claim.

Ah, impostor. There you are. It loses power when you shine a light on it. Then listen closely — whose tone is that? Your old boss? A teacher’s clipped remark? An entire cultural system that teaches some people art is a luxury rather than a right?

PAH!

Once you know the owner of the voice, you can answer it. Because imposter syndrome is rarely born of arrogance or delusion; it’s often the bruised echo of exclusion. Naming the chorus that sings inside your head is the first step toward writing in your own voice.

The function of self-doubt

I am wary of anyone who claims never to feel self-doubt. Doubt, after all, is not proof of weakness; it’s a sign of thinking. It’s what intelligent, creative people do when they look at the vastness of what they don’t yet know. It’s the mind taking stock, the imagination testing its own boundaries.

Self-doubt, in moderation, is a function of intellect and creativity. It keeps you curious. It stops you from becoming complacent. But — here’s the danger — it can turn carnivorous if you feed it too much. Don’t let it eat you up. Doubt should prod you into refinement, not paralysis. It’s the small flame that sharpens your awareness, not the wildfire that consumes the whole forest.

So when you feel uncertain, don’t panic. It may mean you’re growing. Just don’t let that alertness harden into self-hatred. You can hold the doubt lightly, examine it, even write it into your work, but you needn’t obey it.

While I am on this point, whatever happens in your writing and publishing life, guard against bitterness; the bitterness that can come from disappointment. Bitterness is entirely corrosive: of relationships, creativity and joy.

Progress over perfection

The impostor’s favourite weapon is perfectionism. It tells you, If it’s not brilliant, it’s worthless. But that’s an impossible standard, and it kills creativity. In The Alchemy, I talk about gentle productivity: measuring progress by compassion, not punishment.

Ask yourself each day: What can I do gently today? Maybe it’s fifty words. Maybe it’s rereading a paragraph. Maybe it’s rest. Small acts accumulate. Writing a novel is an endurance event made of many tiny mercies. You don’t need to be magnificent; you need to persist. (Although do try to be magnificent!)

Educational ghosts

Many of us carry the ghosts of our schooling. The red-pen humiliation. The essay returned with ‘You don’t understand’ scrawled across it. (I always mark in green, by the way!) The implication that writing belongs to cleverer, posher, more literary people. If your education was patchy, or practical, or stopped too soon, you might still feel that someone else has the key to a room you’re locked out of.

But you’re not outside the room — you’re building your own. I might argue that the books which changed literature were written by people who didn’t fit the mould. The rough edges of your experience will become the texture of your prose. You don’t need to write like the canon; you need to write like yourself.

When those ghosts start muttering ‘Not for the likes of you’, remember: they are history. You are the living, present tense. Do also remember that, even if you are lucky enough to have a loving family about you, if this is something you are becoming, and if you have done something visibly clever, it’s possible that your family, friends and acquaintances will still think you’re a bit of a twit. Often, we get swatted back to our earliest pathology and to the role that, often unwittingly, groups of people have assigned to us.

It’s a bit like Christmas with your family, I always say. Nod politely. WE know the truth, right?

The evidence file

Keep an evidence file. Each time you show up to write, note it down. Each time you finish a scene, ask a good question in a workshop, or receive a kind word from a reader, write that down too.

When the impostor chorus gets loud, open the file. Look at what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter if it’s messy or partial. The point is to prove to yourself that you are here, doing the work. Facts are stronger than feelings, and seeing your own persistence in black and white can be the best antidote to doubt.

Comparison: the false arithmetic

On a course, it’s easy to look sideways. Someone’s writing glows; someone’s structure looks tidy; someone already has an agent. The impostor feeds on this. But comparison is a false arithmetic. You are not on the same timetable as anyone else. Some of you are writing in stolen moments before dawn; others after the kids are in bed. Some have studied literature; others have lived it. All of it is valid.

Your only reliable measure is this: Did I attend to my own work today? That’s the only question that matters.

Community

Talk about it. Say, ‘I feel like a fraud.’ Watch the nods around you. Everyone does, even those who seem most secure. The silence around impostor syndrome is what gives it teeth. When you share your doubt, you build community — and community softens the fear.

I tell my students: the most important conversations aren’t always about technique. They’re about resilience, about how to keep faith with the work when your head fills with noise. Every time you speak honestly about that noise, you make the space safer for someone else. It’s like passing on the baton and why I have been very open about my difficult background and, as far as I can, the complexity and challenges of my roles now, which include complex needs in my immediate family and coping with chronic illness (which is not to say that everyone must do this; some people do not feel safe so doing and that is fine).

Also, it’s important to distinguish publishing from writing. You can attend to your writing but, although it can be different if you are self-publishing and good at the business side, there is little of the publication side of things which you can control. If you can strengthen self-regard and nurse the sense that you have done a bold thing and the best work you can do, the situation will be easier for you to manage.

The alchemy of belonging

Gentle productivity says this: you don’t have to earn your belonging. You already belong, because you are here, doing the work. Self-doubt, impostor feelings, the internalised voices of class or family or fear — these are part of the creative landscape, not proof of your fraudulence.

You may never silence them completely. Few of us do. But you can learn to write alongside them. You can make a kind of peace. You can even turn them into fuel — the friction that sparks empathy, complexity, tenderness in your prose. It took me some time to grasp this, but now it underpins everything.

That’s the alchemy: transforming doubt into story, anxiety into attention, fear into the persistence that finishes a book. So when you sit down tomorrow and that old chorus begins — your teacher, your parents, the inner critic, your dodgy ex-husband, that friend who’s been a bit snarky — take a breath, smile, and start anyway.

You belong here, writer. You always have. The trick is simply to keep writing until you believe it. We are all here to support you.

Anna

If you’d like more encouragement from Anna, you can join her on this spring’s Ultimate Novel Writing Programme. Fancy meeting her before you commit to taking the course? You can book a 20-minute Meet Your Tutor session for just £20, which is fully refundable against the cost of the Programme if you go on to study with us.