How to take yourself just seriously enough

or, why you should wear pants

We all want, deep down, to be taken seriously. We want to walk into rooms and feel respected, understood. We want our name to be spoken of in the same sentence as our idols, and for our books to sit on the same shelf as our favorite authors. We want to be able to speak without interruption, or present to an audience without that sinking feeling that we’ve maybe gone on too long and someone’s going to say, “Thank you. Moving on, next we have…”

But we also fear, deep down, that we will be taken seriously. That our careless words might spur someone to go do something stupid, like break up with their boyfriend or quit their job to be a writer. That we will be held accountable: to deliver more results faster, or to publish a new book every year, a better one. That we will have to keep performing in the public eye to crowds that might turn on us any moment. That we will be asked to do something important, like manage people or speak about decolonization, and we’ll mess it up.

So we self-sabotage. While we profess to be one thing, we project an image that undermines it. We say we want to lead, but perpetually retreat to the shadows; we buy the equipment, but never use it; we are writers who introduce ourselves with our “real” jobs… because the moment we announce ourselves to the world, there is a very real chance we’ll be either cut down or ignored.

So how do you trust your voice when you don’t have an authority backing you up, or a coalition that can amplify your voice? What I’ve learned so far is that until you take yourself seriously, no one else will. You can’t pussyfoot around your goals—you have to commit without knowing the outcome. You are the startup you never asked to join, and you are the angel investor.

This doesn’t mean prancing around declaring yourself a messiah, but for those of us who are self-conscious, even stating our ideas with more conviction can feel as if we’re suddenly trying to be a Tiktok influencer or a manipulative scam artist.

I’ve been taking stock of some of the things I’ve done over the last few years to be able to shift from “I work in tech and sometimes write stories” to “I’m a tech executive and an author” without feeling like a total fraud. Here are some of them.

1. Mindset: a matter of verbs, adjectives and nouns

This shift is from talking about things I’ve done to things I am. I’ve faced a LOT of internal resistance on that front, almost as if my subconscious has been shouting back, “What gives you the right to put me in a box?” I’ve bargained with adjectives, e.g. “Okay, if you don’t like being called an author, how about the word creative? Am I creative?” (Hushed breath: “If I can accept calling myself creative today, maybe tomorrow I’ll call myself a creative.”)

2. Dressing the part (and not just above the waist)

The pandemic was a bad time for pants. We all know the reason BBC interview guy didn’t move to steer his kids out of the room was because he wasn’t wearing any. And then, after the pandemic, most of us didn’t fit into them anymore. It’s incredibly hard to feel like a transformational organizational leader in stretchy leggings. I ended up getting a whole new wardrobe, including several pants.

3. Getting professional photographs

I tend to have a plastic smile if I know a camera is on me. I am far more comfortable being behind the camera. I didn’t want my face at the back of Driving by Starlight, because I was worried people would hate the book and then associate it with my face. I made some such convoluted excuses at the time, but the reality is that I just don’t like being photographed. Well, I’ve learned to accept my face, especially since part of being either an executive or an author is having it plastered everywhere or visible at high-fidelity on an enormous screen.

4. Hiring professionals generally

I am fully aware of the privilege of having an admin and the ability to outsource things like laundry and house cleaning. But there are certain things I didn’t know you could hire people to do, like taking author photographs, or telling you what to wear so you look good on VC or at your book launch, revamping your website, or writing painfully effusive marketing copy for your book that appeals to the right audience.

5. Establishing my identity and online presence (reluctantly)

Strangely, hiring professionals for some things only taught me which things I needed to do myself (although I really didn’t want to). I can’t stand social media in general, which meant I couldn’t in good conscience outsource that to some assistant who would sit around “liking” other people’s posts at the right times of day and create a soup of hashtags for my sporadic Instagram posts. It felt like throwing litter onto a dirty beach. The only way I could stomach being online was authentically, and if that meant posting on Substack and merging my work and writing lives on LinkedIn, so be it.

6. Honing my craft

If the first few things were about the surface, the next few were about substance. I took courses on craft and read books on it. I experimented with styles and worked with editors to learn and grow. A long time ago, a writing teacher dissuaded us from the idea of “finding your voice” – which implies you have only one, the authorial voice. But just as you don’t have one “leadership style” but rather are able to bring to bear the right style for the moment and the context, you don’t have one writing style either. Or one genre, for that matter. Yes, I’ve written Young Adult fiction; I’ve also written romance, thriller, fantasy, non-fiction, short stories and poetry. I look forward to learning more skills.

7. Committing to community

I have always wanted a “salon,” although in my fantasies, I had a nice royal patron, like the old days. Accepting that I’m not just an artist but a patroness of the arts is new, terrifying, and occasionally cringe, especially when I think about how this means I have to actually talk to people I don’t know. But I’ve met so many authors, artists, and creatives who never really get thrown the parties they deserve. Who’s going to celebrate us if we don’t celebrate ourselves?

8. Reading with intention (but without patience)

Like most authors, I have a giant TBR pile. Like most executives, I have a perpetually full inbox. I deal with both of these things the same way. I have three modes of reading:

• Skim mode: How I read emails and most documents, looking for bolded words, bullets, headers and key takeaways.

• Scan mode: How I read books on craft, or leadership techniques, or technology. These books are usually way more verbose than they need to be.

• Savor mode: How I read fiction (and really good non-fiction). This usually involves devouring an entire trilogy in a weekend (or, in one case, 2 million words of fan fiction), or sitting with a highlighter to mark out the sentences that will haunt me for a lifetime.

But with any of these modes, I keep in mind the adage: “The reader owes the writer nothing.” When I read, I am merciless. When my interest flags, I stop. I don’t believe in finishing books (or emails) that don’t interest me. If I, as a reader, lower my bar, I will never grow as a writer.

9. Embracing the imperfect offering

I’ve now done so many revisions that I’ve lost my fear of them. I have written the same stories in first-person POV and third-person POV, in past tense and present tense; I’ve changed the plot or the style and rewritten, restored or resurrected so many drafts that I’ve lost track. In some ways, we write as if we’re still doing things by hand or with typewriters, as if the words we put down are somehow final. It means we sometimes take the “big decisions” too seriously, as if we can’t just go back and change the POV or the plot or literally anything. Hell, we can republish a new edition after a book is out. Walt Whitman published some nine editions of Leaves of Grass; some had 12 poems and others over 400. So I’ve been building up the patience to do endless revisions, to accept that the work is never done, but sometimes it’s ready to be shared with the world anyway.

10. Eyes on the prize; don’t confuse the road with the destination

One of the benefits of having been published is that I know it’s not the goal. Publishing a book is the means of reaching readers and connecting with the broader world, and that’s something you live and breathe every day. Even if you publish a book once a year, that’s not the end of the journey; it’s just a pit stop on the road of connecting with readers and growing your craft. Similarly, being an executive isn’t about, you know, the promotion that declares you one. It’s about living and working differently, recognizing that you are a steward of something bigger than yourself. It’s humbling, knowing that your technology changes the world, that your stories change lives. But it’s also worth taking seriously, for exactly that reason.

So wear those pants.