Suzanne Falter-Barns: "I chose to be a writer. Really chose it."

“Four years ago, I was a frustrated, fed-up writer, sitting in a Starbucks in Times Square in tears. I’d gotten 27 rejections on my book — ironically enough,it was about how to live your dreams — and I was sure my own dream of being a successful author was dead.

“At that moment, a little voice whispered in my ear that I would only become a writer when, and if, I chose it. Like really chose it — deep in that secret place we all have in our gut.

“So I chose it, simply because there didn’t seem to be anything else I could do at the time. I decided to walk out of Starbucks a writer, absurd as it seemed.”

Suzanne Falter-Barns – from her article: Coaching Creativity: 7 Lessons From Artists

This idea of choosing your identity as an artist comes up a lot in the writings and interviews of artists. Our self concept can be fluid and change as our awareness of what we are capable of changes.

A constricted or distorted sense of identity – like what happens in the impostor syndrome – can lead us to limit what we think we are and can do.