impostor syndrome | Karavansara

So I am going to be “one of those guys that write Sherlock Holmes pastiches” – my adventure about the Manchester Mummies was accepted, and I am well pleased with this fact. It was a lot of hard work getting the story out, due to my deep antipathy for doctor John Watson.
But the editor liked the final result.

Now there’s one thing I found out I’m doing when my stories are accepted for publication – I never paid it any attention, but this morning I finally noticed: as soon as I got the acceptance mail and replied it, I went and re-read the story.
To see if it’s really any good, if those holes I remember thinking over I finally filled and stopped.
And of course I did, and the story is fine, or it would not have been accepted, and yet…
I need to see for myself.
That’s impostor syndrome at work, I guess – but at least it’s an innocuous expression of it. Might even learn something, re-reading the stories that actually sold…

Now here’s a challenge.
A true challenge.
There’s this big hue and cry out on the web because a guy was caught bragging about how realistic his female characters are, and they actually suck big time. Not the first time we see sucky female characters written by male writers, alas.

fdc3f0889baa37ab7373a92670a95952--pulp-mill-lili So now there’s this social media thing doing the rounds

‘Describe Yourself Like a Male Author Would’

And seriously, it’s pretty fun.
I usually cringe at the sort of female characters that haunt (or should I say infest?) the current catalog of inept fantasy and testosterone-loaded spy thrillers by terminally adolescent male writers. Because while I can accept certain clichés in books from decades past – and indeed love those McGinnis covers and all that, it’s sort of part of the period charm of such books, if you do not take it as a lifestyle suggestion…
While I accept it, I was saying, I find it hard to swallow in contemporary works – because we are supposed to be more enlightened, nowadays.
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