While at Gen-Con last month, a woman said something that struck me during one of the Writers Symposium panels I attended. She said that when she first started attending conventions after getting published and meeting some of her writer heroes, she suffered from Imposter Syndrome and felt like she didn’t deserve to be there. While she only mentioned it briefly, I knew exactly how she felt.

Wikipedia defines Imposter Syndrome as “a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.”

I’ve sometimes mused that the only reason I’m considered intelligent (I took an online IQ test as a college freshman that said mine was 135) is because the standards for intelligence had been lowered. Ever seen the film Idiocracy? That’s what I’m talking about. Couple that with being around friends like Nick Hayden (who won’t admit he’s a literary genius) and family like my brother Jarod who is super-talented and imaginative, and I feel like a midget among giants.

For example, a fellow Children of the Wells collaborator once said Nick creates complex characters and I wrote thrilling action scenes. Externally I appreciated what she said, but internally I was reeling. I liked that my stories were exciting, but creating great characters was a skill I thought every good writer needed to master. Action scenes were just window-dressing. (It didn’t help that she also said the hero I created for the serial was boring unless playing off of other characters while Nick’s were strong enough to work on their own). It was like she was saying Nick was Francis Ford Coppola and I was Michael Bay. I suddenly felt like the least talented person in the room.

When I hear back from readers, I sometimes find myself thinking, I have fans?! like I don’t deserve them. They tell me they love my books, and I almost blush from embarrassment. Sure, I’m a better writer than, say, that hack E.L. James, but I still feel like my stories and talent don’t hold a candle to my peers or the “truly successful” professionals out there (Neal Gaiman and Orson Scott Card, to name a few). Heck, when I’ve pitched The Day After to readers, I tell them I think the best story in the collection is Nick’s and not mine. (Jarod disagrees and says mine is the best, but I write that off as familial bias).

The reality of my situation is a mixed bag. I hold a degree in professional writing from a respected university and was taught by some of the best in the writing business, but if I was to look at my books’ actual sales numbers (or even just the number of reviews they have online), some would say that’s evidence that I’m not that good. I even had an agent—a woman I went to college with—tell me the book I sent her was well-written but wasn’t “trendy.” Yet, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve had readers tell me they loved my stuff when they read it. Heck, I had a new reader buy a copy of Ninjas and Talking Trees the last day of Gen-Con, and no sooner do I get home does she message me on my professional Facebook page to say she’d read a few chapters and now wanted links to the rest of my books. I didn’t know what to do with myself (other than send her the links, of course).

All of that to say that even at this year’s Gen-Con, I felt like I didn’t deserve to be there. Last year I had terrible book sales. I saw myself as the least successful writer in Authors’ Avenue. Indeed, I even thought I was a rank amateur compared to most, if not all, of my peers there. They’re obviously more talented, marketed, and connected than I am, I thought. It took about a day-and-a-half of good sales at this year’s con for me to start putting that behind me, but even by Saturday, I was still a bit depressed. The kicker was getting a pep talk from a guy (sadly, his name escapes me at the moment) who saw me at the Christianity and Media Panel the day before to bring me out of it. He bought a copy of 42: Disovering Faith Through Fandom and after hearing a bit of my story, said he saw how I could strike up a conversation with any random passerby and use that to draw them to my booth. He was sure God would use me to glorify Him by building relationships, and that I had just as much of a right to be there as my peers did. I needed to hear that.

All of this to say that I have to remind myself that I’m not an imposter. I’m not the writer-ly equivalent of a Cylon masquerading as a human. I am a writer. I have been published. I have readers and fans. They may be a small number now, but they will grow. I have the respect and friendship of my fellow artists. I have all of these things for a reason, and not because I’ve deceived anyone or deluded myself.

To paraphrase Dr. Leonard McCoy, “I’m a writer, not an imposter!”