As you might have heard a bajillion times, my first chapbook has now been published by Evening Street Press, and I’m really excited about it.

But.

If you’re a poet yourself, maybe you’ve read some things about chapbooks and how tough they are to place in bookstores because most bookstores really, really hate them. I didn’t want this to be true — but I’m finding it to be pretty true so far.

Likewise, I don’t know what I thought would happen when I opened my box of author copies. Maybe something like that scene in Pulp Fiction when they open the briefcase or whatever it is, and there’s a mysterious, almost celestial glow?

I guess I expected some type of self-validation, like the song in the Tony Randall movie Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? that repeats over and over that the main character has “got it made!” and just what a swell, successful guy he is.

Did I think I would no longer be as conscious of the fact that I lack an MFA, and that I am trying to combine my artistic life with a boatload of other stuff? Was finally getting a chapbook published going to put an end to my tendency to compare myself against others — to read contributors’ bios and imagine my fellow poets ensconced in their bookshelf-lined writing rooms or on rustic and deeply fulfilling sabbaticals when they’re not igniting the fire for the next generation of creative young minds? (I know, I know … my fantasy probably does not equal many creative academics’ reality.)

The truth is, whatever level of success I (and perhaps you, too) achieve with my writing, there will always be someone who’s doing more. Oh, look — I have a chapbook, but this other person has a book. Like, a full-on, 60-page book. It’s not much thicker than my chapbook, but there it is. It’s on the shelf right in front of me, in fact — because books do get on bookstore shelves. So what I really need to do is … get a book published. And that’s when I’ll feel like a real poet. Right?

Oh, imposter syndrome, I know you from so many other parts of my life, and yet you always seem so true.

So, how do I get out of this funk and back to being over-the-moon ecstatic about this great thing that has happened, this wonderful gift that I should never take for granted or downplay to myself? How can I quit — just for a little while — looking ahead to the next hurdle and the next and the next? That’s the million-dollar question right there. All I can say is stay tuned.

And if you’ve ever felt this way, too — that some other writer has achieved x, y, and z and is therefore “the real deal,” that there’s some magic something that they have and you don’t … just know that you’re not alone. This may be, in fact, as much a part of many creative writers’ lives as SASEs and submission fees. Maybe the key is to acknowledge that and just keep pushing forward.

(Note: I’m not putting in any links because I just want to get this out, but I encourage you to Google or YouTube both film references and “imposter syndrome,” and … OK, I can’t resist this one link, in case you don’t know the deal about my chapbook, and this other one because Evening Street Press deserves to be recognized.)