So you're writing a novel, la-de-dah. Typing away like a rock star. Day after day after day.
After day.
And then, out of nowhere, whap! A horrific thought slaps you upside the head, yanking you out of the story and paralyzing you so that your daily word count takes a serious nosedive. Suddenly you wonder if you're an author, that maybe all the things you write are just slobbery bits of drivel bubbling out of you. Panic sets in. Perhaps you're not a for-real writer. Maybe you're an impostor. A poser. An orangutan mimicking kissy noises in front of a mirror. Or worse -- maybe the zombie apocalypse really did happen and you're nothing but a body operating on rote memory because shoot, if you read what you've written, those words certainly look like a person with no brain wrote them.
