Impostor Syndrome vs. Reality: How I Stopped Waiting for Permission to Write

A personal story about realizing that being a writer isn’t a title ─ it’s an action

Every time I thought about writing a real book ─ a big, proper book ─ I’d stop myself with a question: “Do you have the energy, time, and resources to build an entire world from scratch, like Tolkien did with The Lord of the Rings? No? Well then, don’t even start.”

And I’d close my notebook, shut down the document, throw away another draft.

I’d always dreamed of being a writer. As a child, I imagined myself sitting on the porch of a country house, looking at the sea, drinking tea, and writing stories. I even chose my first career with that in mind ─ I went to journalism school.

At first, my family laughed it off. A five-year-old dreaming of being a writer ─ that’s cute. But by the time I was fifteen, their comments got sharper:

“Who needs your books? Who’s going to read them?” “Books are going to disappear soon anyway!” “You’ll starve ─ writers don’t make any money!”

And the main one: “Don’t be ridiculous. Have you actually read your own writing? Just because your teacher likes your essays means absolutely nothing!”

Gradually, their voices merged into one ─ the voice of my inner critic.

Sure, I wrote articles and scripts that got praised and paid. But they were short. “That’s not a book. That’s not writing,” I told myself.

Sometimes I’d try to get back to the dream. I’d open my favorite authors, reread them, and think: “This is how it’s done! You’ll never write like that.” And I’d close the notebook again.

Morning pages, almost every morning.

Who Gives Permission?

A few years ago, I was scrolling through Instagram and saw the word “Writer” in an old acquaintance’s bio. And in her stories ─ “Writing a book.” It stuck with me.

She wasn’t a writer. Not by education, not by profession. I remembered that ten years ago she’d mentioned wanting to write a book. And all that time, the book was “in progress.” She’d share updates: write a page, then five, then drop it for a year.

I looked at her and thought: how easily other people try on roles that I won’t even allow myself?

I have 16 years of experience in journalism and scriptwriting. But I can’t call myself a writer. Why? I have a whole list:

• I graduated from journalism school, not a literature institute.
• I’ve never written a full-length book or published anything.
• I don’t work on “real literature” ─ my format is short texts, blogs, content.
• I’ve never taken serious writing courses.
• I don’t have a study with a sea view, a typewriter, piles of drafts, or a character map on my wall.
• And most importantly ─ I don’t have a diploma, a document that would officially allow me to call myself a writer.

Yes, I also have a few unfinished books. But to publish a book, you first have to finish it, then edit it, show it to experts, gather feedback, rewrite it, show it again… It’s a challenge with an asterisk. Impossible if you look at the whole picture.

But if you look at it another way: I write every day. Morning pages ─ almost every morning. Several hours a week go into my blog, content for my business. I help friends write and edit their texts.

So does that make me a writer? Okay, I don’t write epic novels. But I write texts. Every day. For years.

Isn’t that enough? Or do I still need someone’s approval to claim that word?

The Fear That My Experience Isn’t Valuable Enough

I can write different things: sad and funny, long and short, creative and technical. For newspapers, for TV, for social media.

And this versatility always felt like a weakness to me, not a strength. A sign of mediocrity.

In my head, a true professional should choose one path and endlessly perfect it. But I’ve always been bored writing just one thing. Even while working on complex projects, in my free time I’d write for myself ─ something completely different.

Is that what real writers do?

Writers are about creativity. And I’m about craft.

And recently, my self-esteem as an author took another hit. Just for fun, I decided to run one of my old essays through an AI detector.

I was 100% sure about this text. Because:

• I remember typing every single word.
• The text hadn’t been digitized before ─ I typed it from a printed copy.
• It contained a live interview with a real person.
• It was written more than ten years ago, when public AI didn’t exist.

And you know what the program showed?

95% of this text was generated by artificial intelligence.

Beyond Belief! My living, human voice ─ the one I’d been developing for years ─ was mistaken for a machine’s. I felt both amused and bitter. There it is, the value of my many years of experience.

Beyond Belief! AI called my human essay 95% machine-made.

Comparison with Others

When I worked in journalism, I admired people who volunteered to be in stories.

“Hey, I work at this factory, do a piece about me!”

I thought those people were incredibly brave. They had interesting lives, stories to tell. They were real. And I was just the person with the recorder, documenting other people’s stories.

I worked on all kinds of TV projects ─ from news to entertainment shows. But my life seemed boring to me. And my work ─ interesting only to me, probably.

What can one journalist tell another journalist? We’ve all heard it all in the smoking room.

Sometimes I kept a diary, writing down funny moments from shoots. But I never showed anyone. Who would care?

Once at an event, I got talking to a colleague. She was about fifteen years older than me, with twice my experience in journalism.

We talked about work, about life. And I noticed she was genuinely interested in hearing about my projects, my travels, my moves between cities, my hobbies.

“Don’t you have that?” I asked carefully.

It turned out she’d been working at the same small publication for over 25 years. All that time ─ the same topics, the same sections, the same people. Often she doesn’t even go out for interviews anymore; she just rewrites last year’s materials.

She has no hobbies. No travel ─ the last time she went on vacation was 15 years ago, to a nearby town with her kids. She stays with her husband only because they share an apartment and it’s “force of habit,” though they’ve lived in separate rooms for ten years. She still uses an old tape recorder with cassettes ─ she got used to it back in college.

And she thought everyone lived like that.

“Wow!” she said. “You’re so much younger, but you’ve done so much!”

I saw genuine amazement in her eyes. And I started thinking.

What if my experience actually is valuable to someone who doesn’t have it? What if people really are interested in hearing my stories?

And if that’s true ─ maybe there are people who’d want to read them, too.

The Turning Point: What Helped Me Stop Waiting for Permission

After that conversation, I decided: it’s time to start writing and putting it out there.

I started a blog on Medium. I was curious how a completely unfamiliar audience would respond to my texts.

But I kept putting it off. Then I’d quit after two or three posts. What stopped me:

• English isn’t my first language. I’ve never even worked in it. Native speakers will notice the mistakes immediately ─ so they won’t be interested.
• Just because my experience was valuable to a colleague from a small town doesn’t mean it’ll be interesting to people from other countries.
• Writing isn’t my main job. Maybe I shouldn’t spend energy on it? Maybe I should invest it in growing professionally in my own field?

But the desire to write won.

I gave myself permission to write ─ without a diploma, without credentials, without permission.

Blank pages, no pressure. Just permission.

“My right to write needs no confirmation,” I tell myself every morning when I sit down with my laptop or notebook. (Yes, I often write by hand ─ it makes the text feel more alive to me.)

I allowed myself to simply write. Without grand plans to conquer the world, without crowds of fans, without reviews or criticism.

If my words resonate with someone ─ I’ll be happy. It means those few hours weren’t wasted.

If they don’t resonate with anyone ─ I’ll still know those hours were good for me.

I still feel awkward calling myself a writer. But I can confidently say: I am an author.

And that’s already a small victory. Isn’t it?