Shy authors?

[Hypoxia]

We all wear different masks for different occasions.

And for different places. Nice thing about traversing space-time is that we can re-invent ourselves to suit the occasion and/or location. Around what passes for 'home', I'm one person. Elsewhere, I can be anyone else. The 'me's in Yukon, California, Oaxaca, Guatemala, Spain, Italy, Germany, Estonia are not the same. (Don't even ask about Albania.) And the temporal 'me' mutates day-to-day, year-to-year. I have been described as 'amorphous' (*). I'll buy that.

Online is just as good, or better -- because it's cheaper, no need to buy new clothes. "On the InterNets, nobody knows you're a poodle." I would be very surprised if, in a gathering of LIT authors and readers, people could be identified just from their appearance and speech. On the InterNets, nobody knows my accent, my nose, my fingerpicking style (or nosepicking), my melodious singing, or the flavor of my farts.

Am I ever whom I appear to be? I'll never tell.

--Hypoxia [gasp!]


(*) "You seem like one of those amorphous SDS types." Told to me while performing with a traditional ritual dance troupe, in costume. Very puzzling.

 

[VenusButterflies]

Does anyone else create a totally separate persona as your story author? I realize we're already here with aliases, so it feels a little neurotic to create another super secret alias for my stories. At the same time, my stories feel way more personal than any of my posts, and I'm not sure I want any readers to be able to know the more real me. I'm getting ready to start submitting my first stories.

Anyone else feel that way?

I did feel that way for a long time. I think I did the reverse of what you're doing -- I've been posting stories since 2011 and just a few days ago decided to use the message boards without an alias. I'm pretty neurotic, I can't deny that.

My stories are based on my fantasies and therefore have a lot of me in them. But I figured why not just lay it out there? At the end of the day, if we're not here to get off, we're here to get better at what we do, have fun, and find like-minded people. I was very shy, but then I just said, "Fuck it. I'm doing it. I keep coming back here, so why not?"