Another tax season is now officially over and I’m always glad to have it behind me.  And I did kind of infer that I would be posting more meaty posts after it was done, so here I am, blogging again.  But don’t get too excited because this post is mostly about nothing . . . writing nothing, to be specific.

There is a big, exciting project that is writing related that I’ve been working on, but I’m not sure if I’m allowed to start spilling the beans on it quite yet.  There are a few people who already know what I’m talking about, but I’m not sure if I should start blogging about it just yet.1

But, I haven’t done any actual writing lately, so there isn’t much to share about that.2  I did attempt to track down a new tool for plotting, but I’m pretty sure that I’m being overly picky3.

I’ve also been journeying down the thorn-covered path that is selecting an acceptable pen name.  Those who know me will know that the art of selecting names is one of my biggest challenges.  I find it difficult to select character  names, much less a name for myself.  So, I fully expect that it’ll be a long and painful process.  The pen name I finally pick must meet several key criteria: first, it must be a woman’s name4; second, it must be acceptable for the fantasy genre5; and finally, it must be still available.  I’ve got my Vizier of Nameology working on it, and I’m slowly gathering a list of acceptable options that I can present to a select group of writers & friends, for their voting and discussion6.

My current plan is to select an acceptable pen name, buy the domain and put together an author website, and then move my writing related blogging over to that domain.  And, even though I know this will be an unpopular decision, I’m not going to tell everyone over here about it.  A large part of my reason for selecting a pen name is to get some separation for myself between my personal identity and my author identity.  And inviting everyone who exists in my personal universe over to a blog I create for my writing identity really defeats that purpose.  I know that it’ll probably eventually all come out in the open, but I’m going to let that happen when the time is right.

Have an idea for a pen name for me?  Got a cool free tool to suggest for my plotting delights?  Go have at it in the comments with suggestions for everything that makes me write nothing lately.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • PDF
  • email
  • RSS
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • FriendFeed
  • Posterous
  • Ping.fm
  • Tumblr
  • StumbleUpon
  • Twitter
  1. And if you’re one of the people that I’m actually working with on this project, we gotta figure out when a good time for me to start blogging about it is going to be. [↩]
  2. And I did toy with the idea of just giving it up altogether, I enjoy certain parts of it too much to do that . . . yet [↩]
  3. I just can’t seem to find free Windows software that’s flexible enough to work anywhere and that falls in that sweet spot between lots of cool features, but still simple enough to use [↩]
  4. I write about women characters and I think the fact that I am a woman is fairly essential to my writing, so I don’t want to be ambiguous about my gender [↩]
  5. if I were writing chick lit, Daisy would be at the top of my list, but I just can’t picture reading an epic fantasy book written by someone named Daisy [↩]
  6. and if you have a good pen name to throw in to the ring, feel free to add it in the comments [↩]

No related posts.