Picture this: You’ve worked and slaved over your creation – novel or other endeavour – you’ve offered it up to the world. People welcome it enthusiastically and compliment you accordingly. Then, weirdly, you are flooded with doubts. You start questioning if your work is any good. Maybe you were fooling yourself and the people were only complimenting you ‘to be nice.’ Congratulations, you’re now neck-deep in Imposter Syndrome.

A lot of people will have no idea how you’re feeling. One thing I’ve learned about Imposter Syndrome over the years, it’s how pervasive it is. It’s amazing how even highly-successful people struggle with it. According to Anna Lou Walker in her book, “Ditch Your Inner Imposter“, there are five main categories of this Inner Imposter. Recognize yourself in any of these?

These categories can overlap and how rigidly they apply, depends on you. If you would like more detail, check out the book they were drawn from by clicking here. However, you’ll find there are numerous books about this subject. Imposter Syndrome has been around a long, long time.

I hope this little touch on a broad subject has opened your eyes the next time you question if you’re not good enough. It can take a lot of work but you and your work are worth it. It will also teach you to discern between ‘sage advice’ and ‘crap criticism’. Even when it’s coming from yourself.

For the Year of Dragons that I’ve been illustrating I had some trepidations about November. As the most prominent ‘holiday’ in this month (where we live anyway)is Remembrance Day. I looked for ways how a dragon could fit and be respectful. In the end, I decided to leave the red poppy exclusively to the veterans and have a purple dragon represent the purple poppy. This particular flower commemorates the sacrifice of service animals in war. I felt an angelic dragon drawing her wings around these animals would convey the sentiment I was hoping for. You too can offer your own sanctuary to the Dragon of Remembrance and honour all the animals that have served alongside our troops.