Why do I feel like a fraud in what I create?
Imitating isn’t cheating
Nobody skips the first two steps.
“You don’t start out original. You end up recognisable.”
Not from a chapter — based on an interview with Jacob Collier, British musician and arranger.
When it happens to you
You want to make something of your own. Really your own. So you wait for an original idea, and you wait. Or you start, you find it looks too much like someone else’s, and you stop.
Why you’re mixing up the finish line and the starting line
Nobody starts out with a voice of their own: it gets built, and in this order — you imitate openly, you interpret in your own way, then you say what nobody has said. Impostor syndrome doesn’t come from a lack of talent, it comes from being on the wrong floor: you judge yourself by step 3 standards while you’re on step 1.
Rule
You don’t skip the first 2 steps. You climb them more or less quickly, that’s all.
How to find your step, in 4 steps
- Write down what you’re stuck on, in one sentence.
- Ask yourself honestly which step you’re on. Not the one you’d like to be on: the one you’re on.
- Do that step’s work, on purpose and without guilt. Step 1: choose three people who inspire you and copy them openly — copy, not “take inspiration from”. Step 2: take the same thing and change just one variable, the subject, the tone, the ending. Step 3: it comes on its own, you don’t decide it.
- Write the date next to the step. In six months you’ll see you’ve moved — and that’s something you never feel from the inside.
⚠ Imitating isn’t copying to publish
You imitate to learn the craft, not to sign the result. What you produce on step 1, you keep to yourself: it’s practising scales, not a book. The rule is simple and allows no exceptions — you never publish someone else’s work, even half-transformed.
What it changes for you
You stop waiting for the brilliant idea before you start, and you work without judging yourself because at last you know which floor you’re on. That cuts impostor syndrome off at the root: it isn’t saying you’re rubbish, it’s saying you got the rules of the game wrong.
How to practise
Once a month, reread your sentence and see whether you’ve changed step. Nobody climbs in a week. Everybody climbs in a year.
Remember
You don’t start out original. You end up recognisable.
You may be wondering
How do I know I’ve moved up to the next step?
You don’t feel it at the time, hence the date. You notice it rereading six months later, never live.
And what if I stay stuck on step 1?
It’s often because you’re copying too few people. Three different sources is what stops you becoming a copy of just one.
Copying makes me uncomfortable.
That’s exactly the sign you were taught to aim for step 3 straight away. Nobody finds it awkward when a musician practises scales.