The One Question That Haunts Every Author

The first time it really stopped me, it didn’t come with drama or panic or some cinematic moment of self-doubt.

There was no spiral. No urge to delete everything. No emotional collapse.

I was sitting with a draft open, rereading something I had already rewritten more times than I wanted to admit, making small edits that felt productive enough to justify not moving forward.

The cursor blinked.

And then the thought landed calmly and confidently, like it had been there the whole time, waiting for silence.

Who are you to write about this?

Not harsh. Not loud.

Reasonable.

The kind of voice that sounds like it’s trying to protect you from embarrassment rather than hold you back. The kind of voice that pretends it’s on your side.

I closed the document.

Not because the words were wrong, but because they suddenly felt exposed, like they were making a claim about me that I wasn’t sure I had earned the right to make yet.

What’s interesting is that even then, I already had the experience. I had lived what I was writing about. I could point to real moments, real lessons, real evidence. But none of that mattered in that moment, because the question wasn’t about accuracy.

It was about permission.

That voice didn’t disappear after that day. It followed me into other parts of my work. When I thought about sharing ideas publicly. When I hovered over the publish button. When I felt the urge to soften what I was saying or hide behind someone else’s credentials instead of standing in my own lived experience.

Who are you to talk about this?

Most authors recognize that voice immediately.

Even the confident ones. Especially the thoughtful ones.

And here’s the part we don’t say out loud enough.

The people most haunted by this question are rarely the least qualified.

They’re the ones who care deeply about the work, about getting it right, about not misleading anyone. They’ve done the work, gathered the insights, lived the lessons. But the voice doesn’t argue with facts.

It goes straight for identity.

And underneath that identity question sits something quieter and harder to admit.

Ego.

Not the loud kind. Not arrogance.

The subtle kind that becomes obsessed with how we are perceived.

Ego, Giving, and the Direction of Attention

That question, who are you to talk about this, rarely starts with writing.

Most of us learned it much earlier.

In school.

We were trained, slowly and consistently, to associate speaking with judgment. You raised your hand, gave an answer, and waited. Sometimes you were praised. Sometimes you were corrected. Sometimes you were wrong in a way that lingered longer than it should have.

You learned very quickly that expression came with consequences.

Follow the instructions. Color inside the lines. Answer the question the right way, not your way.

You weren’t rewarded for curiosity. You were rewarded for correctness. You weren’t encouraged to explore ideas. You were encouraged to land on the approved answer.

And every step of the way, you were graded.

Scores. Letters. Rankings.

You were constantly told, explicitly or not, where you stood in comparison to others. Smart. Average. Behind. Advanced. Gifted. Needs improvement.

Over time, something subtle happened.

You stopped seeing your ideas as offerings and started seeing them as performances.

You learned to ask, Is this right? Before asking, Is this true?

So when you sit down to write as an adult, your body doesn’t register it as creativity. It registers it as being evaluated again. As if there’s still someone at the front of the room with a red pen, waiting to mark you up or down.

That’s why the fear feels so physical.

And it’s why ego quietly sneaks in.

Because ego, in this sense, isn’t arrogance. It’s self-protection. It’s the part of you that learned early on that visibility equals vulnerability, and vulnerability often equals judgment.

So you start thinking about how you’ll be perceived before thinking about what you’re trying to give.

What will they think? Will I sound foolish? Will this lower my standing?

That inward turn shrinks the work.

Not because the work isn’t good, but because its energy collapses under the weight of self-monitoring.

But here’s the part school never taught us.

Writing is not an exam.

There is no answer key.

There is no teacher grading your worth.

The moment you redirect your attention away from how you might be judged and toward who might be helped, something shifts. The work opens up. It stops being about being right and starts being about being useful.

This is the difference between ego and giving.

Ego asks, How does this make me look? Giving asks, Who might need this?

Ego wants certainty before action. Giving moves with imperfect clarity.

That’s why something as small as a smile can matter so much. It doesn’t need to be justified. It doesn’t need approval. It doesn’t need to be graded. It simply meets someone where they are.

And writing, at its best, works the same way.

Not as a performance. Not as proof.

But as an offering.

Your ego will always resist that. Mine does too. Because ego prefers logic, control, and safety. Giving requires trust. It asks you to move before you feel ready, to offer something without knowing how it will be received.

That’s uncomfortable.

But it’s also where meaningful work comes from.

Becoming a Finisher While Life Is Happening

At some point, I started noticing something about myself that mattered more than confidence.

I was finishing things.

Not perfectly. Not in a straight line.

But I was finishing.

I finished my first book. And it wasn’t because the doubt disappeared. That feeling showed up the entire way through. It showed up in the middle of chapters. It showed up during edits. It showed up when it came time to share it publicly.

But I shipped it anyway.

And I learned something more important than anything the book itself taught me.

Finishing changes you.

It teaches you that clarity doesn’t come before action. It comes from action. It teaches you that iteration is part of the work, not a sign that you failed the first time. You don’t become qualified by waiting. You become qualified by staying in motion.

That mindset started showing up everywhere.

With the RAE Van podcast, for example. I have a very clear vision for what that becomes. I know the road experience I want to create. I know the conversations I want to have. I know the energy I want it to carry.

And right now, it’s on the back burner.

Not because I gave up on it.

Because life happened.

I became a father.

And suddenly my attention, in the best possible way, went exactly where it needed to go. Priorities changed. Energy shifted. That didn’t mean the work stopped. It meant the pace changed.

The same thing happened with my YouTube channel. I used to be incredibly consistent with teaching-style videos. Now it’s evolved into more conversations, more podcasts, more space to shed light on others and learn alongside them.

Some people might call that inconsistency.

I call it development.

Because I know that when the time comes to go all-in again, I’ll be ready. Not because I waited, but because I stayed connected to the work in a way that fit the season of life I was actually in.

This newsletter is part of that.

Even writing this, I can feel that old voice hovering, questioning whether I’m qualified to say any of this, whether I’ve done enough yet, whether I should wait until things feel more complete.

That feeling will probably never go away.

And I’ve stopped waiting for it to.

Instead, I’m choosing to do the work anyway. To share anyway. To live in a way that embodies what I talk about, not because I have it all figured out, but because I’m willing to keep moving while figuring it out.

That’s the real line authors cross.

Not when they feel ready. Not when the voice goes quiet.

But when they decide that finishing, shipping, and iterating is more honest than waiting for permission that never comes.

Your voice doesn’t need to silence its doubts.

It just needs to keep showing up.

And so do you.

Sometimes the most generous thing you can give is the work itself, unfinished edges and all.

Keep going. Get out of your head, give from your heart.

-Hussein