Imposter!

In my limited experience, there’s nothing more humiliating than trying to write a book. Like most people, I don’t like humiliation so I’ve gotten good at excuses. I’m not really a writer. I’m a mom, an English teacher, an international development worker, now a farmer (of all things!!) and I dabble in writing periodically. But the craft of writing intimidates me. Actual writers terrify me. And I should say up front that I have good friends who are writers. I have relatives who are writers, many of them even published. Many of them have even said very warm and encouraging things about my book. Probably just being nice (I tell myself), seeing as we’re related.

For me to move into that space of writer and make some claim there gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Am I a writer? Sure, I blog–not as often as I should. Sometimes I write letters. I’ve kept journals at various times in my life. I’ve written some plays for kids. I edited and wrote and some chapters in one of my Dad’s books. But it’s not like I’m published, not really. Just dabbling. And I don’t do it in a very disciplined or prolific way, like real writers do.

I’ve looked into what it takes to be a writer–a real one–when a few years ago I stepped on a story I saw thumping its tail on the sidewalk in Addis Ababa. I tried to shake it off, but it growled and grew, and eventually I thought it was an OK story so I wrote it down. Then I tried to find out what to do next.

It was a story for kids, and it had a dog in it, and I thought, “How hard can it be to publish a children’s book?” So I signed up to the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, paid the (hefty) dues, downloaded their How the Heck do You Do This Book and realized that getting published in the kiddie lit field is super competitive and pretty much impossible. However, there’s no limit to the number of conferences, workshops, competitions and support groups you can sign up for and pay a bunch of money for in the meantime.

The whole thing felt fake. Real writers get published. They’re prolific. Mostly (in my mind), they suffer and are eccentric. They’re wicked smart. They’re super disciplined and get up at 4 am to write pages and pages in their attic or basement study. They probably live in the woods overlooking a cliff, or maybe in a little cottage by a moody, foggy coast. They have outlines stapled to their walls and quotes from Madeline L’Engle and Stephen King and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pasted in their bathroom, and torn-out pages from Save the Cat Writes a Novel taped to their desks and file cabinets.

Me? I did the interviews, went on the observation visits, held the feedback parties, and sent out the story to friends and sensitivity readers for feedback. I tweaked it to where I thought it was pretty good. Then I submitted it to a SCBWI competition. That’s the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the one with the unpronounceable acronym. I was feeling pretty good about it, thinking that if I was unpublished it was because I had never tried to get published, hadn’t put in the leg work and made the effort. Now that I’d done the work–not just on the book, but the deep dive into publishers, agents, and editors–getting published would surely follow. The book was a baby, conceived, nurtured, and gestated with loving care–now it was time for it to be born.

The SCBWI competition was for the “Late Bloomer Award for Unpublished Writers Over 50.” I didn’t win. I didn’t even get an acknowledgement. So not only (in my mind) was I a crappy writer, I was a crappy writer over 50! And the hard realization began to sink in–the work I’d done on so far wasn’t the nine months of gestation and development of my book baby. What I’d accomplished so far was only the conception, only a roll in the sheets. The entire pregnancy–morning sickness, weight gain, backaches, blood draws, constipation, being kicked in the kidneys–was still ahead. Not to mention labor itself. Only THEN would my book baby be born. I was still at the very beginning.

So I put the story away for a few years. I was too old to go through this. I had too much else on my plate. I was the wrong voice, it was the wrong story, no one would read it.

And then, of all things, I found an agent! I had looked for an agent, mind you, and had sent the manuscript for my book to a dozen or so children’s book publishing houses, according to the instructions in SCBWI’s How The Heck Do You Do This Book. The silence was so deafening that when I got a few actual rejection letters it felt like a victory! At least someone read it and took the time to craft a little message of encouragement with the rejection note.

So what if I found my agent completely by accident in a hair salon in Addis Ababa? She was talking to our mutual hairdresser, who happened to be writing a memoir, and the hairdresser said “Tej, this is Rose, and she’s also writing a book!” So we had lunch and she became my agent, and another of those REAL writers whom I admire and also am a little scared of.

I was hiking through the George Washington National Forest with my in-laws recently, after moving from Ethiopia to Virginia, and saw that my agent was calling me on Whatsapp. “Hey, give me a minute,” I said to my hiking companions. “I have an international call coming in from my agent about my book!” I could have died, it felt so fake to say that, as if I was some actual writer and not just a phony.

I was trying to express this generalized feeling of fraud to a friend (an actual, legitimate, published writer!) over lunch recently. “Oh, you’re experiencing Imposter Syndrome,” she said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “What?” I almost spilled my chai over our shared plate of pakora. “It has a name?” I was such an imposter I didn’t even know what Imposter Syndrome was.

I will readily admit that this kind of self-inflicted pain is maddening to my agent, and to others generously encouraging me to put on my big girl Nike kicks and Just Do It. “Don’t lead with your insecurity,” advised a member of my writing class, his Art Garfunkle hair framing his gentle eyes. “You have a story to tell. Don’t apologize. Just tell it.”

So (deep breath) I’m writing a book! Not only writing it, but publishing it. With the help of my incredible illustrator, Abiy Eshete, my amazing agent, Tej Rae, my brilliant writing coach Cynthia Yoder, my fabulous layout editor Edward Miller, and the many other people who have encouraged me to take this step. Watch this space for more details.

Discussing the book illustrations over coffee with Ethiopian artist Abiy Eshete and his wife in his Addis Ababa studio earlier this year. The book is illustrated with Abiy’s trademark urban collage artwork.

On location on Entoto Mountain setting up a photo shoot for the collage illustrations. Here the illustrator, Abiy, coaches one of the characters (played by Kalkidan Aberaraw), about how to act in a scene.

A scene from Watch Out, Woosha! The main character, Dawit (played by Andualem Kebede), gets a piece of bread from a shopkeeper to share with his dog, Woosha.