#psuedonyms

Madison Grimmer

Amberly Willis

I suppose, if he does find this tumblr, I want it to be more difficult for him to recognize himself. I always meant to ask him how he felt about nicknames, and if he ever heard this one. But I never got around to it.

Here is a comics that I made for the Women’s Review of Books by Wellesley University Press in July/August 2015. 

Psuedonyms. I want one. I'll never, and never should, have enough children to quell my addiction to naming. Already, I have five names created for five children who've not been conceived... I have two pets and a dozen name ideas for future pets. Why not publish under another name? That way, I can be the sole sacrificial victim and my husband can be spared a life of endless progeny and pets. One would think that, being a writer, naming characters for the rest of my life would satisfy me, but strangely it's not enough. I want to work under different names like foxes and tanuki shapeshift in Japanese myths. That's the kind of trickster I am, I guess. If that's what I want to do, however, I must face the dilemma of building a body of work. I can't betray the trust of my readers by playing some sort of phantom-of-the-opera game with them. If they like my stories then I can't in good conscience make them work that hard to find another of my books to read. (That's bad business; it would drive a publisher crazy.) If I stick to one psuedonym, that's a moot point. The problem is, I don't trust myself to stick to just one. Knowing me, I could publish every work under a different alias. That's my delimma. For now, at least I know that I want to reserve my name for my friends and let my spirit play under a guise. Your humble author, Roo Franks

>I was finding myself on the Internet, but I was also learning skills that would be useful both as a professional and a human offline. My ability to be an effective creator was hugely shaped by writing popular fan fiction and running side-project businesses in virtual worlds. Researchers have also found pseudonymous games to be great environments for training leadership skills. “Individuals you’d never expect to identify—and who’d never expect to be identified—as ‘high potentials’ for real-world management training end up taking on significant leadership roles in games,” wrote a trio of professors in the Harvard Business Review.

-ES Morar