Quote:
Originally Posted by omk3
Writers have written under (multiple) pseudonyms for centuries. Some have done so to see if their success was because of their writing or their fame. Some have done so to reach a fresh audience, despite of their fame. And for a multitude of other reasons too, I would think. This is barely new, or a characteristic of the digital age.
Writing is all that it is about for you, and that's how it should be. But then the story belongs to the public, you say so yourself. However you have repeatedly taken your work off the internet, I'm guessing because you don't identify with it any more, even though it's under multiple names, probably all false. I wonder if it's not for the sake of freedom, but for the sake of distancing yourself from what is no longer yours, that you want to be truly anonymous? Excuse my rambling, just thinking aloud.  |
Partly I take stuff down and destroy it because that's the only control I have over that writing, and it isn't much of a control, once something is on the internet it is there for good. Someone, somewhere has a copy. Also at least one of those take downs was because my gmail got infested or hacked or soemthing horrible and I didn't want it spreading outwards.
I think you're right, though, about the distance thing, but I also believe it ties into the not wanting it to be about the 'me' of it all. I'll use Stephen King as an example. Stephen King hasn't written anything worthwhile in over ten years. He has consistently written bad material, over and over again, with little to no interruption in that flow. Stephen King stopped being a writer a long time ago and instead became Stephen King. Now his son, Joe Hill is published. Hardback horror published in markets that haven't seen a push on hardback horror in a decade. Joe Hill is published because Stephen King is his father.
These are corruptions of a system that is already corrupted. Stephen King once wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman and everybody but the public knew it was Stephen King. Richard Bachman got good marketing because it was truly Stephen King.
The cult of personality behind writing, the ego of the attached name, I'm not truly comfortable with and I probably never will be. That's at least partially what I'm trying to address with all this. It also begs this question: In the age of the digital is there any such thing as an author any longer? Aren't we, as writers merely the first domino that's toppled in the row?