Am I an Imposter?

A lot of the characters I write are women. Not occasionally. Not as a convenient secondary character. Women are often at the center of my stories. They are protagonists, investigators, survivors, leaders, mothers, sisters, daughters, friends, and sometimes the person standing alone when everyone else has already walked away.

And sometimes I wonder: Am I an imposter? I'm a man. I know that.

There are experiences women have that I will never personally understand. I will never know what it is like to move through the world in a woman's body or experience all of the expectations, assumptions, fears, frustrations, and realities that come with being one.

So who am I to write those stories?

Imposter syndrome has a way of asking questions like that. But when I really think about it, I don't believe I'm an imposter.

Part of the reason is that I grew up surrounded by strong women. I was the only boy in a family of my mother, grandmother, aunts, a cousin, and a sister. Women weren't some distant mystery to me. They were my family. They were the people I watched navigate life. They were the people who taught me things, challenged me, loved me, frustrated me, encouraged me, and showed me what strength could look like.

And later, in the military, I reported to women I respected tremendously. They were leaders. They were professionals. They were people I trusted. I saw firsthand that strength doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes the strongest person in the room is the person who isn't convinced she's strong at all. That's something that has fascinated me for a long time.

I have watched women doubt themselves while accomplishing things that would have terrified other people. I've watched people who didn't necessarily think of themselves as brave make difficult decisions because there was no other choice. I've watched women carry enormous responsibilities while wondering whether they were doing enough.

And perhaps that's one of the reasons I keep writing women like that. Not perfect women. Not women who are fearless. Not women who always know what they're doing.

I want to write women who worry. Women who doubt themselves. Women who cry. Women who make mistakes. Women who are afraid and keep going anyway. Women who sometimes need someone else to remind them that they are stronger than they think they are.

Because I don't think strength means never being afraid. I think strength can mean being afraid and moving anyway.

That's far more interesting to me. The women I want to write aren't superheroes. They're human beings. And that's where I think I have to trust myself as a writer. I don't need to pretend I understand every experience a woman can have.

I don't. I shouldn't. If I ever convince myself that I do, then I probably have a problem. But there is another truth that matters. We all worry. We all dream. We all hope. We all cry. We all love. We all hate. We all experience grief. We all experience fear. We all want to be understood. We all wonder whether we're enough. We all have moments when we feel like we're pretending to know what we're doing.

Those emotions don't belong exclusively to one gender. The circumstances surrounding them can be very different. The way society treats us can be very different. The experiences that shape us can be very different.

But the emotional core is something we share. And that's where I begin. When I write a woman, I'm not trying to write what I think women are. I'm trying to write a person. A specific person. A woman with her own history, her own contradictions, her own fears, her own desires, her own strengths, and her own weaknesses. I'm trying to understand her rather than define her.

Maybe that's why imposter syndrome doesn't ultimately win this argument. Because I don't write these women because I believe I have some special authority to speak for women. I write them because I'm fascinated by them. I respect them. And, in many cases, I recognize something in them that I recognize in myself and in the people I've known throughout my life.

The woman who doesn't believe she's strong but keeps showing up. The woman who is terrified but refuses to quit. The woman who thinks everyone else has it figured out while quietly wondering if she's the only one who doesn't. The woman who spends her entire life taking care of everyone else and eventually has to learn that she deserves care, too.

Those are the women I want to write, maybe because I've seen them, maybe because I've known them. Maybe because some of the strongest women I've encountered never considered themselves strong at all. And maybe that is the part I understand better than I sometimes give myself credit for.

I can't experience everything my characters experience. No writer can completely become every character they create.

But I can listen. I can observe. I can empathize. I can question my assumptions. I can write the person rather than the stereotype. And I can remember that fiction isn't built on identical experiences. It's built on emotional truth.

So, am I an imposter? I don't think so. I think I'm a man who was fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by women. A man who had the privilege of serving under women he respected. A writer who has become fascinated by the strength of women who don't always recognize their own strength. And a storyteller who wants to explore what happens when those women discover that the qualities they thought were weaknesses may actually be the things that carry them through.