You gotta be tough if you’re gonna be a writer. I submitted a draft of my application essay for an MFA program to my writing workshop. The workshop picked up on my uncertainty. I had previously had my confidence rocked by rejections from artist residencies, and it bled into my prose. But after revision, research, and preparation, I got over it. Now I truly believe the administrators would fight over me in a bare-knuckled boxing match under the nearest underpass for the chance to have me in their program.
I wanted to share the best advice I’ve received on Imposter Syndrome, concrete ways I revised my writing to sound more certain, and how I finally became confident of my work and acceptance chances.
The best advice on confidence hands down is from the Ask a Manager podcast, episode 23, “I Need More Confidence at Work”.
“Alison: When you’re dealing with this kind of confidence thing, it can really help to ground your thinking in paying a lot of attention to what the actual evidence is telling you. Meaning, take a look at what kind of feedback you’re getting from managers and from other people and look at all the evidence about what kind of reputation you’ve built. If you do that and you see that it doesn’t really line up with your own internal critique, sometimes that can set you on the path to building a more realistic self-assessment.”
In my grad school application, I took snippets from past performance reviews, praise, or other nice things people have said about my writing. I then circled questions from the essay prompt and built an accomplishment-cloud around that question.
I also edited out the qualifying language. Qualifying language, or hedging, is language used that makes the writer or writing sound more or less certain. Don’t qualify your accomplishments to be accurate. For example, don’t say, “I won a writing contest (but it was a local library contest (and there were only 100 applicants (and…)))”. If it can fit in parenthesis, or preempted with “but” or “however”, it’s best to leave it out. Qualifying language diminishes your accomplishments. Just say, “I won a writing contest.” That is accurate.
For my final editing pass, I reviewed myself through the viewpoint of a character named Personal Enthusiastic Friend (PEF). PEF is a character who’s been floating around in my head waiting for a story to call their own. I’ve conned them into being a better, braggier self for application essays. I adopt their voice when I’m writing applications and pretend they’re writing it, not me. To get into character, I write about myself in third person to further distance myself. Then, I swap to first person when I’m done editing.
Personal Enthusiastic Friend works in two ways. First, they make writing applications fun, and when it’s fun, it’s easier to write something with personality. Second, they trick me into viewing my own accomplishments more objectively. Weird? Yes. Works? Also yes.
But the thing that really got me over my uncertainty—the thing that made me think, I actually have a good shot—was going to the faculty and graduate student publication pages, checking out their books, and reading them. They write some weird shit! And I write some weird shit! And I thought, these are my people. They would like my stories.
Concrete preparation breaks down uncertainty. Revising your applications for tone, reviewing specific praise, and doing your research may not defeat Imposter Syndrome, but it vaccinates you against it. With a little help from your friends, real and imagined, you’ll rise to where you’re always meant to be.