You’re Only A Fraud If You Think You Are

That’s what I learned from the mouse in my brain.

We moved into a new house when I was about four. After we’d unpacked all the boxes, I woke up early one morning before my parents. I knew how to find the kitchen by then and decided to fix a little breakfast for myself.

Because no one was looking, I made a big glass of chocolate milk, which was supposed to be a special occasion treat. I knelt in front of the refrigerator and add a little more sugar and then a little more cocoa.

Finally pleased with my concoction, I closed the refrigerator door on the mess I’d made. That way, my mother wouldn’t see the layer of chocolate paste that seemed to have attached itself to the cheese, butter, vegetables, and chops we were to have for dinner that night. Then I happily slurped my delicious creation to the table and eased myself onto a chair.

But OMFG! A mouse crept out from behind the refrigerator.

I didn’t really use those bad words back then. But if I’d known any, I would have screamed them out as a mouse crept out from behind the refrigerator. It eyed me, my chocolate milk, and who knows what else? I couldn’t tell because I was up on that chair and screaming my bloody lungs out for my mother. My father. The fire department. Child protective services. Anyone who would save me from that beast.

Fast forward to my writing career.

When I read Natalie Frank’s terrific piece on how her writing can make her feel like a fraud, alight bulb turned on. Even though she’s the doctor, I diagnosed her problem immediately. She had a mouse in her brain. I know because I’ve had one ever since I began writing, and you probably do, too.

The mouse in our brain doesn’t scare us to death, it just kills our belief in our writing.

You see, once my mother got over yelling at me for the disaster scene in the kitchen…Oh, I didn’t think she’d see the trail of chocolate milk I’d slopped from the fridge to the kitchen table? Yeah, after the clean up and lecture, she paid attention to my own worry.

“There’s a mouse behind the refrigerator,” I sobbed, shaking with fright.

By this time, my father was up and swiping at every dark corner of the kitchen with a broom, trying to ferret the creature out, whacking the bejesus out of every shadow and dust bunny. And so it went, for days on end.

The mouse would make an appearance, and we’d try to hunt it down. We couldn’t cohabitate, couldn’t locate it, couldn’t forget about it. We’d drive ourselves crazy looking for the G..D… mouse. (Still hadn’t gotten to my potty mouth stage.)

And then early in my writing career, I realized where it had gone. The mouse had found a home in my brain.

I’d finish a page of fiction I’d think worthy of The New Yorker. I’d prance around my apartment as prideful as any doomed Greek hero. Then I’d read the draft over and find a clunky phrase, and just like that, every ounce of confidence and sense of sureness in my craft would slink to a dark closet in my psyche.

When I’d dragged up a bit of resilience to try again, I’d make my draft sound better. Okay, then, I’d think. It just needed a tweak. I can do this writing thing.

Next story would emerge and I’d think I’d learned so much from my classes, my reading, my writing group. Until someone in the group says you missed the Oxford comma on the second page.

When the mouse tells me I’m a fraud, I believe it. Why don’t I believe it when it tells me I’m a good writer?

On the way home, I’d consider the least messy method of suicide. But when I’d realize I was a whole bottle short of anything effective, I’d suck it up and face my writing life again. When I’d recover from the burn of bad punctuation that convinced me I was a no-talent hack, I’d finish my next story with a surge of confidence, convinced I had this writing thing licked.

But upon a second reading, I’d see so much telling, not enough showing, and no clear path to a believable ending.

Did I give up writing after that internal tongue lashing? No it was worse than that.

I didn’t give up on making chocolate milk when the first taste was bitter. I just dumped the whole sugar bowl in the glass and proceeded. Thumbs up for perseverance.

But like days of making chocolate milk, I have a mouse that lurks behind the refrigerator when I write. It startles me out of my confidence; it quickly snatches my tenacity. It leaves me standing on a chair, paralyzed and screaming for help. Instead of squeaking it’s way across the floor, it screams you’re a fraud, you’re a fraud, you’re a fraud.

And like my father with the broom, I chase after it into dark corners, trying to retrieve my belief in myself. I waste hours and days and even months, in my Nutcracker battle with a whole army of mice, all of them attacking my writing, convincing me I’m an imposter. One day it trashes my craft, the next it’s my sureness in my voice. It doesn’t matter, it’s a hungry little critter, and it will go after whatever it needs.

Does it care that it makes a train wreck of my writing life? Sometimes my entire life? It’s a mouse. It does what it does.

One day after the chocolate milk debacle, I came into the kitchen, and my father had pulled the refrigerator away from the wall. He’d given up on the broom, the wild chases before bedtime when the mouse would make its last peek before we turned out the light. In his thick Irish brogue, he said, “ Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. God forgive me for cursin’, but I’ll make sure we’ve seen the last of that damn thing.”

And with a bucket of plaster and trowel, the next morning my father sealed up the mouse hole and sent the varmint back where it came from.

The mouse was still in the walls or under the foundation, or likely it found its way out into the yard. What mattered was that it couldn’t bother us any more. We simply ignored it to death, and I was free to murder a glass of chocolate milk in peace.

Now to seal up the mouse hole in my brain.

The mouse in my brain felt so real at times I thought it was the real me. I believed it was telling me the truth when it said I was a fraud, an imposter. I’d never be a writer. I didn’t know yet that doubts and dark thoughts seem to be part of the writing persona. In a way, we all have a mouse in our brain. It comes out to torment us when we mistakenly think writing is something we can master in a mere lifetime. But language is fluid and imagination is elusive. One day we’re up, the next day we’ve lost touch with the mothership. The whole enterprise becomes a war with ourselves.

The mouse says see, you’re a fraud. You tell everyone you’re a writer, but you’re an imposter. Here’s the proof, the garbage you wrote today. The voice is so real, I can forget it’s a mouse. It sounds like the voice of the universe telling me to quit.

And then one day I had an epiphany. Who’s a mouse to say I can’t pursue my dream? I’m only a fraud if I think I’m a fraud.

We can’t make the mouse disappear. But we can send it back into its hole, devising a plaster of resilience and determination to keep it at bay.

Some days I’m like my father, whacking at the fear that I’ll be found out, that I’ll never be any good. If I were a real writer, my mouse brain says, you’d know how to fix the ending to this story.

But with persistence I got better at ignoring the mouse. I gad bigger battles to fight than listening to a litany of my faults. The hunt for the right word; a cogent idea. When those little critters lurk tweeting their negative messages, they drain our energy for our work.

These days I do what my father finally did. I bring everything out into the open and expose the hole where my mouse lives. In the light of day I can see a thought is only a thought, not an immutable truth, a message from the universe. They come and go like the wind. Some days I think my writing is great. That’s just a thought. Why do I hold onto the negative ones instead of the ones that make me feel good? There’s no answer, no arguing with thoughts. Where I realized I’m only a fraud if I believe my thoughts that I am, I knew I had my weapon.

I can choose to believe the negativity in my brain or say thank you for sharing, but I’ve got work to do.

Instead of listening and believing and convincing myself my writing is worthless, and worse, maybe I am, I give the mouse a swipe with a metaphorical broom. I send it back to hits hole by writing. Usually all it takes is another paragraph or two or three and by then I’ve drowned out the voice, by working on my writing in spite of it. I seal off the fear I’m a fraud where it can’t get in my way by acknowledging it for what it is. A thought, that only has power if I believe it.

And if all else fails, get out the damn broom and whack the bejusus out of them. But by then there’s usually another thought in my brain. What’s for dinner? Or, finish this damn draft and you can go look at cat videos.

How do you deal with the mouse in your brain?

Here are a few more articles from my mouse brain.

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