Putting my money where my mouth is

A couple weeks ago, I posted about pseudonyms.

I've been having conversations about them since then, particularly about using them for different genres. Genre boundaries have diminshed a great deal in the last few years - particularly the 'rule' saying a writer should stick to one genre. And with online book stores, if a reader only wants books in a particular genre, that's what tags and categories are for.

Tags are of particular concern in a lot of the fanfiction I read - writers are expected to tag for major character death or spoilers for canon, and for level of explicitness, and for whether it contains romance, and the genders of the people involved if it does. Writers are also expected to tag for graphic depictions of violence, underage characters in sexual situations, and rape or non-consent: these are things built in to the platform of Archive Of Our Own, which is where I post my work. There is a little checklist when you start a new story that lets you just tick the box for anything that might apply.

The social aspect of the community also encourages tagging for drug use, mental health issues, suicide, abuse, dysfunctional families - you get the idea. Things which might be upsetting to read to the point that someone would choose to actively avoid them get tagged*. There is such strong community impetus towards tagging that an author who chose not to include a specific tag (because it would have spoiled the entire plot) has actually been vilified because of not tagging.

But this is fanfiction, so things you'd want to look for, like specific pairings or stories about specific characters, are also tagged for ease of searching. A lot of tagging is about finding the particular reading experience you are looking for.

There is some of this available in original fiction, though obviously not to the same extent. Categories, though, offer very concrete ways to separate what one writes into genres without using pseudonyms.

So that's what I'm going to do. I have no particular shame attached to writing erotica - I write smart fiction, no matter the genre, and I want people to find me and want to buy my stories based on that. That's why all of my fiction under 3000 words will end up on here at some point, and everything over 3000 words will go up on my Smashwords (with the exception of Intervention, out on Feedbooks for a couple years already, and future novels that might end up out on other channels).

*This is also known as trigger warnings. For example, someone who has been raped might not be able to read about rape without having unpleasant flashbacks or intense anxiety that would ruin their entire day. Avoiding stories with rape in them is a lot easier if they say what they are on the tin.

Pseudonymously Yours

I despise pseudonyms for the sake of pseudonyms. I snort derisively whenever I see beginning writers asking what their pen name should be. I roll my eyes when people talk about not letting their family know that they write.

I'm beginning to re-think my position.

A friend of mine recently submitted poetry to the New Yorker (as of writing, we are both waiting to hear back). She wasn't sure whether she wanted to submit under her name or a pen name. I told her to use the pen name. She works with children, in the mental health field. Having her name on poetry can't help her professionalism, particularly as my favourite collection of her poetry revolves around (unnamed, unspecified) children and the medications that they're on and how the medications change things dramatically. I think they are fantastic, and show compassion and depth of feeling. Parents of children sending them to her in a professional capacity might not feel the same.

Anonymity is never absolute, but a pseudonym seemed the smartest way to go in my friend's case.

Another friend writes both futuristic thrillers and erotica. She publishes the erotica under a pen name. It makes some sense to me to publish such different genres under different imprints, and the easiest way for an indie writer to differentiate is with pseudonyms. I don't necessarily agree with the reasons she chose to publish the erotica under a pen name: she did so partly out of embarrassment at writing the genre at all and fear of family finding out and being embarrassed. I, obviously, have no such compunction.

But it occurred to me that, since I want to write both YA and romance, a pseudonym might at some point become useful. Even though I know that as a teenager, I myself was alternating YA-designated things with Laurell K Hamilton and filthy smut on the Internet, as were most of my friends, school librarians might not agree with my assessment that teenagers probably won't mind searching for another title by their favourite author and picking up something significantly less family-friendly.

It is not anonymity. It will never be anonymity. But it would be a way for readers to know what they were in for before opening the book.