Wild Chicago
This morning, I sat on a panel with other faculty members as part of the residency for the MFA program at Lesley University where I teach. The panel was about the writing life and our various habits and rituals and ways of working. It was for the students but I found it comforting to know that other writers who I admire also have a part of them that worries their work sucks at times or that has to trick themselves into being productive. Imposter syndrome came up- maybe because I brought it up.
After I published my first book twenty months ago, the most surprising result was that my imposter syndrome got worse, not better. During all of the months leading up to publication, I thought I’d be magically cured of it once I held that book in my hands. I don’t know why I would think this when I’ve read so many hugely successful writers I love say that they suffered, too.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the years I spent in Chicago in art school. One cold winter night, I went to see a performance at an art gallery by a performer someone had recommended, Brendan deVallance. In the performance, he asked for an audience volunteer and then he handed this person a typed document and asked him to stand up and read it. It was a long, vicious critique of his own work that he’d written. So a stranger stood there in the gallery reading while Brendan wore a globe on his head made out of ice and while it melted, he listened to this stranger say things like, “You suck. That’s not even art. This is boring. This is the worst thing I’ve ever been to.” And on and on. I watched the ice melt and I marveled at the brilliance of writing your own version of the kind of critique that could keep you up at night. It was as if he turned his own imposter syndrome into a character and brought it to life.
About twenty years after that night, I was on a Facebook thread one night typing with people I’d known in Chicago and I started to describe this performance and suddenly Brendan deVallance popped in and said, “Hey, that was me.”
From 1989 until 2003, there was a television show called Wild Chicago that showcased various oddities and characters in the city. And here is a clip they did about Brandan deVallance:
Thank you so much for reading.
Your writing always touches me, and here I am again, sitting in the airport getting all misty. I have been deep in imposter syndrome for the last few months. After two rounds of submissions my first book of essays got rejected 30 times with another 10-20 editors not even responding . Every day I wonder if I’ll ever publish anything, if I’ll ever act again, or if my modeling career is over. I think it’s part of the condition of being an artist. Contentment isn’t a luxury that’s easy for creatives to attain. All I know how to do is move onto the next thing. Put my non fiction on the shelf for a while and turned towards my first novel. Look at things from another perspective, flip them around, and try again. This Substack has been a delight. Thank you 🙏❤️