Impostor Syndrome Part 2 (Patreon)

*Sighs* I did something silly. I wondered into Reddit r/fantasy to be exact.

So, interestingly enough, Reddit Fantasy is doing this year's reading bingo again. For those not in the know, it's basically a 'bingo box' of categories to read in. So things like 'Published in 2019' or 'Last book in a series' or, in this case and most directly 'LitRPG'.

You'd think that'd be a good thing? Except...

Well, one of the reddit posts was directly complaining about trying to find a well written book in the genre. And yes, System Apocalypse was included in it. As were many other mainstays. 

And obviously, there were a lot more comments about the 'bad writing' in the genre. Someone even commenting that the entire genre is made up of bad writers or that the genre promotes bad writing.

So... yeah.

Not great for my  self-confidence *Sobs theatrically*. 

Truthfully, while it does hurt a little, it mostly makes me wonder what I'm missing. Because while I haven't read a lot in 'traditional' publishing lately or many of the 'favorites' that they post (again, lately), I don't recall their writing to be that much better than some of the better books in our genre. 

Am I that blind to bad writing? If so, how bad is mine?

Thus the post title. Impostor Syndrome strikes again. 

It doesn't help that, frankly speaking, I never struggled to get a large number of readers. I got lucky and suddenly have a big fan base. It's kind of cool, but then you kind of have this moment of 'huh? Me?' going on. 

Which of course leads to these moments of 'I'm not good enough'.

Part of being a writer is mostly learning to ignore that critical voice, that part of you that says this isn't good enough and just keep going. Obviously, some critical review is necessary but allow too much of it and blam.

You're stuck not able to write. Stuck not able to finish the story. And how scary is that? 

(PS: No worries, I'm still writing. Well, editing, just a mild glimpse into my everyday).