Most of what I’ve published in the past two years, I wrote in places nobody would photograph for Instagram.
The parking lot before work, engine off. Lunch breaks. The car before I picked up my son. Parking lots at sports events, during the game and after it.
For two years, I wrote before the house woke up and then drove to work. Somewhere between home and the office, I left the word writer behind. The sentence I carried in with me was this one:
I’m not a writer. I just write before work.
I was writing every day (at least one sentence) and publishing once or twice a week on Substack, and by this fall more than 10,000 people had subscribed. I still put “just” in front of the writing. That’s writer imposter syndrome in its quietest form: you do the work and still won’t let yourself have the title. Further down are the three steps I use and teach to close that gap, and all three fit in a lunch break.
A stranger would have called me a writer
In the late 1960s, the psychologist Daryl Bem proposed self-perception theory. His idea is that we figure out who we are partly by watching what we do, the same way we’d size up a stranger.
So picture the stranger. A woman pulls into the same parking lot every weekday, turns off the engine, and writes before she goes inside. She does it again at lunch, and again in a parking lot outside a game. You’d call her a writer without thinking twice.
I’d been watching that woman for two years. My brain took a lot longer to agree.
The research stops at the watching. My own claim goes one step further: each of those stolen sessions was a vote, and identity is the count that comes in last. You can be a writer in every way that shows and still feel like someone who just writes before work, because the old story has years of votes behind it and the new one is still catching up.
The day it caught up
A few weeks ago at work, I met few new team members. I told them I’m an innovation strategist, and then I heard myself add, “and I’m a writer and creator.”
It rolled off my tongue the way my own name does. I kept going, too. I told them writing is a big part of who I am now, and my new obsession and passion; just like psychology always was.
Two years of parking lots got me that sentence.
Where you’re probably stuck
Your gap might look different. You might write every week and still tell people you’re “trying to get into writing.” Or the piece is finished, your finger hovers over Publish, and you save it as a draft for tomorrow.
Both are the same gap. The work has moved and the identity is still back where it started.
What speeds up the count is casting votes on purpose, and that’s what Future Scripting™ is for.
3 steps to cast the vote on purpose
I teach this in every workshop.
See it. Picture the moment someone asks what you do and you say “writer” without flinching. Where are you standing? Who’s asking?
Write it. With a pen, for five minutes, in present tense, as that person: “I’m a writer. This morning I wrote in the car before work.” Your nervous system believes what you write in detail, so give it the parking lot, the time, the cold coffee in the cup holder.
Act it. Do one thing this week that person would do. Publish the piece sitting in drafts, or add “and I’m a writer” the next time someone asks what you do.
You don’t have to believe it yet. Belief is the last vote to come in.
Try this tonight
Write down every place you wrote this month. The kitchen table at 5 a.m. counts. So does the car. So does the soccer field.
Then finish this sentence by hand:
I’m a writer, and I write in __________.
Read it back. A stranger would believe you.
Write it first. Live it second.
P.S. Reply and tell me where you stole your last writing session from. I’ll start: a parking lot, engine off.
👉 If you enjoy reading this post, feel free to share it with friends! Or feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.
P.P.S. If your writing lives in parking lots too, bring it to the Writing Lab. In November’s live workshop, Step II: Write it, you finish the piece you keep putting “just” in front of. One workshop is $57. Paid members get the whole lab and the Academy for $97.