CHRISTAL ANN RICE COOPER aka Car Cooper is a newspaper writer, feature stories writer, poet, fiction writer, photographer, and painter. She read an essay I wrote recently about Imposter Syndrome for Women Writer’s, Women’s Books and asked me to dissect it for her blog “Evidence of the Essay.”
I am new to essay writing so this was an instructive process for me. I liked thinking about how I put the ideas together. I also appreciated the chance to shout out some of my favorite literary citizens. For example, Richard Bausch, Susan Straight, Lisa Alvarez, Samantha Dunn, Sarah Rafael García, Kate Anger, Andrea Leeb, Shelley Blanton-Stroud, Peter Gerrard, Victoria Patterson and of course Christal Rice Cooper.
Read the post here.
Excerpt:
After publishing two novels and working on a third, I’ve thought a lot about where my stories come from and realized that having an outsider’s perspective, being able to inhabit other personalities, and putting ourselves in places where we’re not a perfect fit, is critical for good story telling. It might be a “syndrome” but it’s not something that necessarily needs “fixing.”
That’s the problem I have with “Faking it until you make it,” because it assumes there is some kind of “normal behavior” we strive for, so we can “make it” and “achieve success.” If we can’t or we won’t, we decide there is something wrong with us, when there isn’t.
There is a lot wrong with not recognizing the value of having an outsider’s perspective, of being able to inhabit other personalities, of putting ourselves in places where we’re not a perfect fit, of reaching slightly beyond our grasp and then reaching further.
Thanks Christal!
