Hello Real Job, welcome to my writing…
Before I get on with this week’s entry, I’d just like to take this opportunity to say Happy Second Birthday to the Write Stuff site! Thank you Karen for providing us with the opportunity to showcase our talents, and great work with the new site design. It looks fantastic, and we really appreciate the hard work you put in to the site.
For the past four weeks Janie has been providing invaluable advice on protecting your online reputation, and the latest entry touched on pseudonyms and pen-names.
If things had worked out differently, you would not have been reading an article by “Paul Anderson” today. If life had turned out as I had originally planned, then you would need to visit the law section of your local library to find anything by “Paul Anderson”. And on Sundays, you would have been reading something by some guy called “Tony McBeth”.
This was the pseudonym I picked for myself, the name under which I planned to have a second career, in addition to the academic career. Of course, as I’ve mentioned previously, that life has passed on by, so why bother with a pen name?
A pen name would have insulated me from other people’s opinions about my writing. The work of Paul, an academic interested in war crimes and terrorism, would never have been judged in the light of the work of Tony, a writer with an, at times, unhealthy interest in mayhem, murder and supernatural chaos.
Now of course I don’t really care. I am me, and I have got over my reticent attitude to my writing. My mother and godmother read my blog and listen to my podcast, I think I’ve got past any notion of fear and embarrassment.
Except in one area, where a pseudonym might have come in handy. And it is an area which Janie has also previously mentioned in her articles about preserving your online reputation. Employment.
I don’t earn any money from writing (oh, I wish I did…). So I have a Real Job. I am careful not to write about my real job on my blogs. I believe I’ve mentioned that I work with lawyers, but beyond that, I don’t name the firm, the areas of law we work in, or the people at the firm, and especially not the clients. Neither my personal blog nor my writing blog deal with my Real Job.
However, nobody at my Real Job knows that I write. Or that I blog. But they soon might.
This week I became “friends” on Facebook with someone I work with. I have never previously had anyone in my friends list from a current job, for the obvious reason that my Facebook page reveals a lot about me. Janie’s articles discuss the pros and cons of how your external activities can impact upon your life in the workplace and how they may be viewed.
So now I am friends with a colleague. Who is friends with other colleagues. My blog entries automatically upload to Facebook. My Twitter updates appear on my Facebook status. At some point, the people I work with will find out about my other life. A pen name might have prevented that, but only if I had so wholly split my writing and non-writing life in two that the “Paul” part of my life refused to acknowledge the “Tony” part. And I don’t actually see the point in that.
The people I work with know that what I do is not what I had planned to do in life. They are aware that my plans have now changed. They may not know what those plans have changed to (yet) but they know that I am working on “other ideas”. I am proud of what I write, I am proud of my opinions. Should I feel awkward sitting in meetings with people who may have recently read about Gideon and Maria’s burgeoning love affair? No more so than I should feel awkward about them knowing which sporting teams I follow, or what I did over the weekend (common enough office conversation topics, no matter where you are).
Once upon a time I had good reason to separate a writing life from my real life. Now my writing life and my real life are the same thing. So no need for pseudonyms. No need to hide what I do. If you work with me, then welcome. I’ll see you in the office on Monday.
Have you hidden your light under a bushel? Or do you fully integrate your writing life with your “other” life?
Would you be comfortable with everyone knowing that you write, or are there people you would prefer to keep that a secret from?
I used to keep my online personality a private thing from my RL. I slowly started to use my real name then one day I decided that my stand up comic neighbour would really like a certain humor blog I read. Bad thing. He saw my name in the comments then found my blog. Not many people accept what I do with my time and now that he seems to fear/taunt me about how everything is something to be done with chaos magic. No one talks to me from my daughter’s school anymore either.
My novel writing revolves around the occult studies I do. I am thinking of pen name for sure.
Hello Paul, I don’t feel like there’s any reason for me to use a pseudonym when I write, other than the things I wrote about today in: What’s My Real Name?
I use my Real first name and my Real picture, but I am trying to learn to communicate my Real thoughts too. I don’t want to try and be something that I am not. I want to be who I am and my writing seems to show that very well, what else can I say?
Thank you for the great questions and for writing such an enlightening article about yourself and who you are! It really doesn’t matter what name we use, it’s what’s inside that counts.
Enjoy Life!
Well, I’ve just “come out” to my coworkers, not only about being a poet, but about being a Muslim. (I wasn’t one when I first got this job; I’ve converted since then.)
There’s no real reason I didn’t do this earlier, it just never came up… but when I got my first collection published, I wanted all my friends at work to see it, so I brought a copy in. And of course, there’s enough religious poetry in there that people will figure it out (if they hadn’t already guessed from my weird habit of wearing a scarf over my head).
My blog is almost pure poetry, I don’t put personal stuff on there, so it pretty much goes without saying that there’s nothing work-related, no political opinions, etc. It’s not so much caution on my part (though the caution is certainly well-advised) as that I made a decision that my blog was going to be about my poetry, not about me.
I have no qualms about blogging in the open but then there are no conflicting issues that I need to deal with…I am self employed in the real world and have always written for pleasure…both prose and poetry..my blog has no style really..merely an eclectic mix of my opinions..my diary..some fiction and poetry and generally a sounding-off platform and a method of networking with friends and relatives.
Isn’t it interesting that we want to hide that which makes us what we REALLY are? Me too. But not anymore. Retirement has given me the freedom to be myself. This is a blog I posted about this very subject
http://torristravels.blogspot.com/2007/09/when-educators-blog-world-is-watching.html
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I haven’t had a Real Job in years – being a student first and a stay home Mum (that’s job enough!) after that. So I dont really have an identity per se to protect.
What I found was, I wanted to protect myself from those close to me, so I was free to openly and honestly share what was going on for me in life … as I blog personal journey accounts and fiction. As Barbara says though – itsn’t this the ‘real us’.
When I was a teenager I dreamed about the name that I would take as a writer, but decided after a few years that was really quite stupid – partly how would all those friends who had travelled the path with me know when I’d made it (got something published) and secondly – what was I ashamed of? Nothing – now!