Letters to Viv: Suspicious of Good News

A letter on first drafts, imposter syndrome, and building a life I'm not sure I'm qualified for.

Letters to Viv
Open, soul-packed letters to the kind of human I write for: the curious, creative, exhausted by the hustle, and craving something more. I’m writing to you (and me).

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Dear Viv,

I finished the first draft of my film script this week.

I’m sitting in the French countryside as I write this, in this old rural house with creaky floors and thick stone walls, a cup of tea beside me that’s gone cold again because I keep forgetting about it. The script is open on the table and I’ve been reading it back, slowly, like I’m trying to understand what exactly I’ve made.

Writing at the Chateau in Normandy, France

Some of it makes me laugh. Properly laugh. Which feels like a small relief, considering it’s a dark comedy and that’s kind of the assignment. There are moments where I can feel something working, where the idea feels alive and a bit different, and I can see what this film could become.

And then there are other moments where I’m staring at the page — what the feck do you think you’re doing here?

Like, genuinely.

I read a scene and think, “This is dragging.” I read a line and think, “you’ve said this already, ya eejit.” I hit a paragraph and feel myself disappear halfway through it.

At one point, I laughed and said out loud, “Jaysus, who wrote this?” Which is a great question when you’re alone in a house in rural France with no one else to blame.

Because this month has also been full of things that, online, look like I’m doing well.

I won a travel writing award. Which my brain has filed neatly under: suspicious. I’ve been asked to be on a travel writing podcast. People are reading my work and responding to it in a way that feels real.

So I’m holding that, and I’m grateful for it, I really am.

And at the very same time, I’m sitting here looking at my script — are you actually able to do this?

Am I going to be able to keep writing at a level that matches any of this? Was that a fluke? Am I about to be found out?

It’s a very odd place to sit.

Because I do know something is there.

The idea is good. I can feel that. It has an edge to it. It makes me laugh in places that feel right. There’s a voice in it that feels like mine.

And then there’s me, sitting here in a borrowed house in the middle of the French countryside, reading it back and questioning my own ability to carry it all the way through.

I lost a career I knew how to move through with confidence, came out the other side of a marriage that shaped most of my adult life, and I’m somewhere in the middle of figuring out what home even means now. And in the middle of all of that, I’ve decided to build a life as a writer.

When I say it out loud like that, it sounds like something you’d hear from someone sitting alone in a foreign country, talking to a cold cup of tea. Or that I should be locked up in a home for the bewildered.

There’s a version of me that feels proud. She’s looking at all of this and going, you’re doing it, you’re actually doing it.

And then there’s the version of me sitting at this table, staring at the same pages. You have so much to learn.

I can feel myself getting better. I can see it in small ways. A line lands more cleanly. A scene holds its shape. I catch something earlier than I would have before and know how to fix it.

And I can also feel how far I want to go.

There are moments where the questions get very practical.

Can I make this work long term? Can I stay consistent? Can I build something that actually supports me?

So I go back to it. Read it again. Fix the bits that, to put it generously, are not good. Stay with it longer than any reasonable person would.

Because underneath all the noise in my head, there is something steady. I’m here, and I’m getting better at it, even if the current evidence is a pile of crossed-out pages.

That feels real.

So I’m letting this be what it is. A draft that holds both the good and the messy. A life that is shifting in every direction while I try to build something new inside it.

It’s a strange feeling, Viv.

And I think I just needed to say it out loud to someone who would understand. Even if that someone is essentially me, writing to myself, in a house that isn’t mine, in a country that isn’t mine either.

The tea’s cold. Again.

XO,

Tanya

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