Kingston poet, writer, researcher and educator, Chantel Lavoie takes a deep dive into her process with three new essays on the Writer’s Mind.
On Imposter Syndrome
When my first collection of poetry was published by a reputable Canadian press I was happy for a few months, then the doubt set in. I could not call myself a poet. It had taken almost twenty years from winning the (now defunct) Books in Canada student poetry award to manage, finally, a full-length collection. I told myself: maybe, after the second one, I would be able to call myself a poet!
Truth is, after two more books and a few times after making award shortlists, I still hesitate. First, the word poet is seen as more pretentious than the word novelist (even if, or maybe because fewer people read poetry than novels). It’s certainly harder to prove. Late eighteenth-century, Irish poet Mary Delany said “I would never set myself up for a poet” because “that is a character I detest.” One could take Delany’s comment made in the late Victorian period, as one about gender, but it was and is also about genre. What does it mean to love and work with words, and even to be exceptional at putting them together, but not to be comfortable with a word that describes the person performing this task? Cognitive dissonance—or a kind of imposter syndrome – this feeling of embarrassment about something you have achieved –has contributed to some good writing but it can certainly be a strain on mental health.
Good tension. Bad tension. Good stress. Bad stress.
The imposter syndrome is not confined to practicing one genre, however. I’ve written a novel that is now with an agent. It’s based largely on the work I did for my last academic book—about boyhood in eighteenth-century London. I have worked on it for years. I think it’s good. The agent, who knows that historical period better than most, thinks it’s good. Several acquisitions’ editors have liked it. And I know that if and when it’s published, I won’t call myself a novelist either. Not after the first novel. I’d say, maybe after the second one.
Why is it difficult for some writers to believe every success one gets, is well-deserved? Even though my day job involves a lot of academic research, writing and publishing, two academic books and countless articles later, why do I hesitate to call myself a writer? Possible reasons: personality (aka perfectionism), upbringing (my family’s high premium on achievement), and social anxiety could all be contributing factors. I don’t know for sure. I am still searching.
So, how does one cope with it? For now, I tell myself every day that every success I get is richly deserved. But for the self-speak to work, there are good days and bad days. What gives me comfort of a sort, is knowing how common this feeling is, wherever it comes from. Also, while the imposter syndrome is a source of discomfort—making me anxious and sometimes preventing me from putting pen to paper—I know that proving myself is still, paradoxically, one of the things that doesn’t drive me to write a poem – for that I have my research papers. I have started taking the time to consciously enjoy the process of writing a poem, hoping that the joy I derive from seeking reward in the process of writing itself, will permeate my academic writing as well. It’s a hope – and like all hopes – a bit messy and complicated.
On the impact of current events
When I was forty-something, Donald Trump won the US election. It was 2016. Remember John Oliver sending that year off with a bang? When the election results were announced in early November, I had stopped listening to CBC radio, and I didn’t listen to it for months. I felt betrayed. How dare they lead me to believe that the very idea of Trump becoming the US president was laughable? Maybe I hadn’t been listening to enough different programs; certainly, I hadn’t properly appreciated the worldview of the right.
I felt physically and spiritually sick about the election for some time. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be there, and not one of his fans or followers. Being far away from the US, I couldn’t automatically presume but I know a lot of excellent writing comes from outrage. And I know, depression can be a close cousin, and for me, it’s hard to produce much writing while inhabiting that particular space. I needed to get out of the head space.
Due to the speed-of-light (but not speed-of-thought) media, both social and anti-social, we’re up on current events almost as they happen, then onto the next event without time to vent. Keeping abreast of things can lead to kinds of mental injury. We know this. The war in Ukraine, the attack on Israel, then on Palestine, the pandemic leading up to and through these more localized horrors—shock, confusion, anxiety, pain, injury – all contribute to the writing, but only after one has achieved some distance from the ‘current’ event. Time they say is a healer, but current events happen currently.
Sometimes it seems the world is a street full of cars going every which way, and the squirrel trying to cross the road is me. It’s almost impossible to achieve the right balance of information and quiet down. Friends who make meditation a daily practice almost have me convinced to try again to still the stirred-up, shaken, mind. Can the squirrel mind evolve to figure out how to evade the cars, not unlike how our predecessors learned to evade natural living predators, but more effectively, by picking a direction and sticking to it? There’d be no guarantee the squirrel mind wouldn’t still go splat, but its chances of making the crossing in one piece would be better.
When I’m trying in some small way to encourage culture change in the world I inhabit (in particular, the Royal Military College of Canada, where I teach in the Department of English, Culture, and Communication), I think often of Bruce Cockburn’s line in “Lovers in a Dangerous Time”: “Got to kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight.” As writers, our words are the boots with which we kick. A lot of the time, however, it feels like we’re doing it with bare feet, and impacting nothing but our tender skin. But here’s the thing. I don’t know what else we can do.
On aging and the writing career
At fifty I’ve begun to misspell words I never have before, and—much, much worse—I’ve begun to forget them mid-sentence when I’m speaking or writing. I even find myself starting to write a word on the chalkboard in front of my class, forgetting whether it has double consonants, and throwing a period partway through the word to indicate I’m in too much of a hurry to finish it. . Has this happened to you? Yikes.
I don’t think this is more the case for me than for most of my fifty-something friends, but it matters that much more when seriously creative writing is what I keep putting off until—what’s that word? Retirement. Not a good idea. Right now, I have the font set to 14 on my monitor to see these words properly. The bell tolls, and maybe before any pension can kick in, memory might not be as strong. I don’t know if fate is inexorable, but senescence certainly is. And it seems to me that this topic is profoundly linked to almost every other topic that relates to mental health: bodily health? Natch. Social media? Absolutely.
Apropos such media, one recently circulating and recirculating post—on Facebook, at least, the older person’s social media—addresses how crazy lucky anyone is to live to the age of 65. Reaching that number puts one in the company of only 8% of the earth’s population. Besides fortunate, I don’t know how we’re supposed to feel about that. Is it really a carpe diem-inducing statistic? I guess it should be, but if one isn’t there yet, it makes reaching 65 seem less likely; if one is, or beyond that, it’s a reminder that each day (or maybe each pain-free day) is a gift. Obviously, I should be feeling that way right now, and I frequently do.
But writing? Those inspiring Pearl S. Buck, James Michener first-novel-published-at-the-age-of-40 stories now seem beside the point, since forty is several years back there, in the rear-view mirror.
What keeps me awake at night isn’t just aging; it’s aging and being able to carry on writing professionally. Very few of us make a living by writing, and far fewer by writing creatively (as in non-technical, non-editorial, non-academic, non-journalistic) work. Grants help some, and contests help others. All of these are now threatened by AI – perhaps the greatest novel of the next millennium will be penned by AI. But, hey— new research suggests that brain cells can re-grow and restore lost functions, so maybe I can deal with senescence by writing more often while not worrying about the results – writing unhinged from time. Even if this is possible, even as I know that, chronologically, the brain starts shrinking, generally in our thirties, in choosing to keep writing on maybe I have already figured out a way to stop the rush of time through my senses. What do you think?
Author
Chantel Lavoie lives in Kingston, Ontario, where she teaches at the Royal Military College of Canada. She has published three books of verse: Where the Terror Lies (2012); Serve the Sorrowing World with Joy (with Meg Freer, 2022) and This is About Angels, Women, and Men (2022), as well as poetry and fiction in journals like Arc, Prairie Fire, and Canadian Literature. Her academic publications include work on early women writers, eighteenth-century literature and culture, and children’s literature. Her academic books include Collecting Women: Poetry and Lives, 1700-1780 (2009) and Writing through Boyhood in the Long Eighteenth Century: Age, Gender, and Work (2023).