Pseudonym

Sometimes I drive myself crazy second guessing what I do.

I write a story. It is fiction, but all fiction comes from somewhere and some of it comes awfully close to the truth. I wonder if the truth is too thinly veiled, if I crossed a line I shouldn't have. Of course I didn't think so when I submitted it, but now I begin to worry.

Worrying is really not my forte. By the time I let something be read by others I am generally very sure that is what I want, but there are always exceptions.

I feel very responsible about my writing. It's purpose is to entertain, but never, ever to hurt anyone in any way. Yet, in order to feel free to write fiction the way I think and feel it, and include the pathos and drama without allowing any self imposed censorship due to embarrassment, I write under a pseudonym. It would be impossible for me to write any other way and be myself.

Sometimes this feels wrong, but it's not really something I can change unless I stop writing some of my best stories altogether.

I have read a few things where I knew the author and have seen myself in his, or her, work. I have always been a little tickled when that happens, because only that author and I really know it's me. I hope other people would feel the same way if they saw themselves in my work.

But I don't know and that is what worries me.