ON PUBLISHEE'S GUILT

I am still in the stage of my “career”—if you can call it that—as a writer and photographer where I don’t yet have enough publications to feel completely deserving of being published and wonder how exactly it happened. I still feel like a bit of a fraud that is going to be found out at any minute. I received an email from one of the editors at Greatest Uncommon Denominator, which will be publishing one of my photographs in the fall, requesting my formatted submission be uploaded to their “ftp.” I didn’t even know what this was and had to write her back asking her to explain it. Of course I thought, now she’s going to think I’m an idiot and know that I’m new at this and don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and she’ll decide that I’m not worth the time and wonder why she ever gave me the opportunity in the first place because I clearly don’t deserve it. Or something to that effect. A tad extreme, yes. And it was only a fleeting thought, but it was there, just the same. But I had to tell myself that she didn’t choose to publish my work because she felt sorry for me, or because that was her act of goodwill for the day. The truth of the matter is, she chose it because she thought it was good. Not just good, but better, even, (at least for their magazine and for that particular issue) than all the other submissions they received and didn’t choose for that round of submissions. Then even I had to admit that that was pretty good.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I could rack up hundreds of submissions and still never quite feel like I was completely deserving, never quite shake the feeling of being a fraud. But at least I know that even real writers, like David Rakoff (Fraud), admit feeling this way. But I think it will get a little better with each publication under my belt. I just have to keep reminding myself:

I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggone-it, people like me.

Well.. I’m good enough and smart enough anyway.