Imposter's Syndrome

I can take no credit for my success. I am a mere transcriber, nothing more. The only work I do is typing the words exactly as they appear in the notebooks. I don’t know where they come from, but they’re mine now.

I just wanted to buy a notebook. Somewhere I could scribble down my thoughts. There was a display of small fancy black notebooks at my favourite bookstore. I’d always gotten cheap spiral-bound ones before, but these caught my eye. It was an indulgence, but I wanted to treat myself. I thought it might help me feel more creative. I knew it would make me feel more sophisticated.

Grabbing one at random, I headed to the checkout, but I couldn’t help noticing that it felt strangely heavy in my hand. It felt right somehow, in a way I couldn’t understand or explain.

It wasn’t until I got home that I realized there was already writing in the notebook. It was just penciled in and I could go through and erase it, but it was annoying that what was supposed to be a blank notebook was already full of someone else’s words. I began erasing the first word on the first page, but my eyes slid to the second word. Then the third. I turned the page. I didn’t come up for air until I hit the back cover.

I closed it. It was one of the best things I’d ever read. Even though I’d had nothing to do with it, I felt a strange connection to the story. It felt like something I might have written, if I’d ever found the time and energy.

I shoved the notebook in a desk drawer and did my best to forget about it.

It was impossible. I thought about it on the bus to and from work. I thought about it while I was brushing my teeth.

I dreamt about it.

I thought about it when my bills were due that month and I got to play another round of my favourite game—Electricity or Food?

I wanted both. Is that so unreasonable?

There was the notebook, sitting in its drawer. No one had come forward to claim it. I’d paid for it. It was, technically, mine.

Was I really going to do this? Claim someone else’s writing as my own?

Not stopping to think in case I second-guessed myself, I pulled the notebook out, opened my laptop, and started typing.

I knew how difficult it was to get an agent, so I just quickly wrote up a cover letter for the first one I found on a list for books in ‘my’ genre, attached the manuscript, and hit send, telling myself the whole time that I could not get my hopes up.

I didn’t change a word of what I’d typed from the notebook.

I woke up to an email from the agent. She wanted to accept me as a client as quickly as possible so she could forward my manuscript to a publisher immediately.

I was suspicious, of course—when things seem too good to be true, they usually are. She’d replied too quickly. Who gets accepted by the first agent they query? But everything I could find about the agent online made her seem legit. She represented some very well-respected authors. And she wanted to be my agent. Of course, I could never tell her it wasn’t really me she’d be representing.

I had one last chance to back out.

I didn’t take it.

I signed the contract.

Part of me was disappointed when I didn’t get another email the next morning.

It took a week for my agent—it still felt so strange to say that—to reply and tell me a major publisher was interested.

My eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw the advance they were offering—twenty thousand dollars. Again, I might have thought this was some kind of scam, but this was one of the top publishers in the world. They aren’t in the habit of playing pranks or running scams.

I sold the book. The editor only had a few notes, and when I checked them against the notebook, I saw that they were all typing errors I’d made. The unknown author’s words were published exactly as they’d been written.

It was an instant success.

I had more money than I’d ever had in my life at one time, but after paying off my student-loan debt and buying a used car and upgrading my laptop so I could do my own writing, the way I kept promising myself I would, and getting a new phone and just bills and rent and food and all the other things that added up shockingly quickly, I watched my bank account start to take a nosedive.

Plus, my agent emailed me, strongly suggesting that I think about writing a sequel while ‘my’ book was still on the bestseller list.

I went back to the store where I’d bought the notebook and grabbed the first one I saw. Turned to the first page. Blank. I flipped through it, feeling like I was going to be sick. Blank blank blank.

It had to have been a fluke. Some kind of practical joke. A mix-up, where someone’s personal notebook had gotten in with the ones for sale. Any day now I’d get a call from a lawyer accusing me of plagiarism, and they’d be right, but the advance was already spent.

I practically threw the notebook back on the shelf and I was about to turn my back on it and hurry out of the store when my hand shot out of its own volition and grabbed another notebook. It was identical to all the others. There was no obvious reason for me to pick this one rather than, say, the one beside it or below it.

I realized it felt heavy in my hand.

Hardly daring to breathe, I opened the notebook, not at the beginning but partway through.

The page was covered in words.

I let out an involuntary squeal, making the cashier look up at me with concern.

I slammed the notebook shut and shoved it in my pocket.

The cashier shook his head and cleared his throat pointedly.

Right. I had to pay for it.

“I’ll take this one!” I laughed, high and whinnying and nervous. I didn’t sound like myself at all. I kept a hand on the notebook during the whole transaction, pressing it closed so the clerk wouldn’t see that it was already full of words and that I was a fraud. At least he didn’t seem to recognize me. Good. I wouldn’t want to be that famous.

I hurried out of the shop and practically ran home, certain I’d be hit by a bus or someone would grab my sleeve and shout, “Stop, thief!” or something before I could get there.

I raced up to my apartment and threw myself into the chair in front of my computer. I carefully pulled the notebook out of my pocket and just held it pressed between my hands for a moment, head bowed. Was I really going to do this—again?

I pictured my bills piling up. The email from my agent.

I reverently set the notebook beside my laptop and opened it to the first page. This time I didn’t even bother reading the story first, I just typed as I went. It was just as good as the first manuscript. Better, even.

It might not have belonged to me, but it was mine now.

That was three novels ago. Each one has been a bestseller.

I’m afraid that next time all the notebooks will be blank.