The FenReview
What's in a Pseudonym
(20 Mar 2009)
A little over 14 years ago, I got my first computer, and with it my first internet account. I wrote a lot of poetry back then and was also delving into literature and planning my first great novel. I'd read the Silmarillian and decide that I'd start small and keep writing vignettes and adding on to a growing mythos until a novel was inevitable (kind of following in what I saw as Tolkein's footsteps). So, I made the world, and then I populated it with dragons. Myths followed, and I published them via an email listerv called [The Fenworks].
Somewhere along the line, that project became a comic, Harmless Free Radicals. It has been casually reviewed by a scant few people online, and it has been published in the Whatcom Independent Newspaper, and it has gotten quite a bit of local acclaim. The percentage of people in Bellingham, WA who've heard of the comic is probably quite high. At least higher than I suspect. I'm constantly surprised by who's heard of it and who reads it.
Well, one Kevin Church just gave me the honor of reviewing my work. After all this time, his praise was very well timed. It's been a while since I've heard a solid compliment about what I'm doing right, and it gives me a great deal of hope for the last year I've planned for my work. His criticism is also rather handy.
One bit that kind of hurts though is that he finds my pseudonym of "Fenmere, the Worm" rather grating.
I've never, ever had that kind of feedback before. In fact, I've been operating all this time as if the name is sacred and well loved by my fans, and more importantly as if it is a well established trade name. It is, quite literally, my second business name. So much has been published under it that it's really hard to stop using it.
Furthermore, my use of the name is actually part of the story.
I think his reaction to the name is an indication that I've lost the story since I started it. The justification for using the name is in my deprecated archives, which are found hidden in the old webpages I no longer link to much. They are a bunch of stories I never finished, and artwork I only want to foist on dedicated fans. But hiding it away I think has probably helped me to fail at my goal of telling the larger story.
Since this review, I've asked my LiveJournal friends what they think, and the most outspoken people also have a negative reaction to my pseudonym.
This is an indication to me that I may need to rethink things a bit.
First off, the name stays. It is an indelible part of the Harmless Free Radicals story, and if I'm going to finish the story ever I need to leave that part of it intact.
But I've been using the name for a wider array of projects than just Harmless Free Radicals, and maybe that's been holding me back.
I feel like it's been holding me back. I've been drawing strength and inspiration from it for all these years, but it no longer feels like an entirely positive thing. It's more than just this negative reaction, too. It's been coloring my thoughts and keeping me from making choices than maybe would have been good for my work. And, it's also been turning some people off, apparently.
So, as of today, I'm going to start working to strip the name from my peripheral projects and unrelated artwork. Except in the case of a few comics, I'm not going to go back and resign anything. But the webpages of anything that's not Harmless Free Radicals related will eventually all have their by-lines changed to "J.W. Sodt", and new artwork will be signed with the same signature that goes on my checks.
I intend for the Harmless Free Radicals franchise to grow, however, so the Fenmere name will not die out.
Get used to it.
Posted by Fenmere
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