Have you ever become so frustrated by your inability to find just what you wanted that you decided to make it (or do it) for yourself? In what area were your endeavours – and how did they work out?
Peeling Back the Layers
As habitual readers of this blog will know, I spent the best part of February decluttering and purging my home. The Grand Purge, I called it. Boxfuls of stuff left the house, destined for charity shop, recycling station or (alas) dump.
Then, with a sigh of relief, I got back to my main work: writing. (For those of you with an interest in things writerly, I’ve been focusing my rewriting work on my weak point: character, using Jeff Gerke’s Plot Versus Character). The job, so I thought, was pretty well done.
Then we went away for Easter weekend, and when I came back, I seemed to see with new eyes.
The house was still full. Cluttered, even. I’ve never thought of myself as being over the top when it comes to possessions, at least on a Western scale – our kitchen bench isn’t piled high with appliances we don’t use; the bathroom isn’t stuffed with half-used lotions and potions, and our sporting equipment consists, in toto, of one petanque set, a frisbee and a boomerang.
But it still seemed like too much. Much too much, in places. I realized, with sinking heart, that I had only removed the outer layer.
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I found myself looking at the shelves and wondering what would make the cut if, instead of keeping everything that I didn’t dislike, I only kept the things I specifically wanted. Only the favourites. Immediately reasons not to leapt to mind: that one was a gift; this other one is part of a set; those ones there you might just not be in the mood for at this moment…
I had thought that I found getting rid of things easy, but it turns out that that was simply because I had far more than I actually even wanted, let alone needed. (Horrifying thought.)
I want to live a simple life, and the cost of that is getting rid of things. Even things which I quite like, in a way; things I’d be happy to keep having, but am not, in point of fact, attached to. Perhaps they are attached to me, though, because they’re quite hard to shake.
It is work getting rid of things. Not just the physical work of moving things from point A (your house) to point B (anywhere that isn’t your house), but the psychological effort of disrupting the usual, uprooting the habitual, and leaving only the intentional behind.
It’s frightening, in a way, and it shouldn’t be. Who am I without all these familiar things? The same person I am with them, surely, only with less stress and more space. Less stuff looming over my shoulder…
But since my work would undoubtedly suffer if I took another four weeks off to focus on de-stuffing, another method must be found. This time, I am thinking of working backwards: starting with the desired result, and doing what is necessary to reach that point.
Of course, this is slightly complicated by (still) not knowing what size house we’re going to wind up in, and therefore how much stuff will need to be removed in order to create the desired degree of spacious unclutteredness. And since I tend to be a big-picture vague-on-details person, I need to come up with some concrete specifications of what part of the work I’m going to do when, or it will only happen in fitful frustrated starts and stops – ultimately patchy and unsatisfactory.
But there we are. As Pasternak so rightly observed, “Living life is not like crossing a meadow.”
The Joy of Pseudonyms
I don’t know about you, but I love the idea of pseudonyms. They’re the modern equivalent of the secret identity, and if there’s one ploy I am fond of, it is the secret identity.
Many and varied are the pseudonyms I have fancied using, but (alas!) I can’t write fast enough to furnish them all with material; and in any case there’s little sense building up multiple reputations where one would do. And since I eventually realized that not everything I dream of writing would sit well under the name of Sinistra Inksteyne, I revealed my own, rather prosaic identity. Sinistra is a much less prosaic identity: she’s the sort of person who’d wear a hat like this:
without giving it a second thought, black lace streamers and all.
My everyday identity may have been revealed, but the urge to create pseudonyms has not abated. Dormant for some time, it sprang anew to life when I discovered (thanks to Wikipedia) that there have been no less than four baronets of Great Britain rejoicing under the name of Page-Turner. I kid you not, Page-Turner. Sirs Gregory, Gregory Osborne, Edward George Thomas and Edward Henry.
And to my knowledge, not one of them attempted to become a best-selling novelist, or indeed a writer of any stripe. This is a scandalous waste of a name that screams best-seller in every stroke. Unfortunately what the authorities are pleased to call the 1733 creation still has issue, which is a complicated way of saying that while the name is no longer in use, someone’s still got dibs on it. (Sir John Dryden, at present.)
Excuse me while I change my hat for a cap with black ribbons in token of my sorrow at opportunities lost. 
Thank you. Now then! Not being the kind of person who will recommend to others advice which she will not take herself, I had a stab at the pen-name generator I recommended to you earlier this week. Most of the fields I was able to fill in without too much trouble (a positive adjective took me some time, and the make of my first car was flatly impossible) and the generator promptly presented me with a bewildering array of options, helpfully sorted by genre.
Some were pretty reasonable: D.C. Makepeace (general fiction), for example, or D.C. Dominics (fantasy). Even Crispin Makers isn’t too bad, if you don’t object to the name of Crispin. Then there were the positively strange: Dequorah C. Makarios (science fiction) or D.C. Mazazioz (ditto).
D.C. Derringer-Blackios (crime) has something of a ring about it, but I positively and flatly refuse to call myself Dagbjot Jaguar Makarios (fantasy). For one thing, I can’t pronounce it, and for another, I should never be able to look myself in the face again. I can’t anyway, since it’s a physical impossibility, but even if I could, I shouldn’t. The embarrassment would be too much to be borne by living flesh. I should have to veil my face at all times like Medusa, lest I inadvertently catch my own eye and turn myself to stone.
But worse was to come. Deb Carolyn Wittykins sounds like the kind of person who knits toilet-roll cozies in the shape of kittens and speaks to everyone as though they were five years old. Bad. But not so bad as – can I even bring myself to mention it? Alas, in the interests of honesty, I fear I must. Let us have it out at once and let the subject drop forever. But I must plead with you, my readers, for the good of mankind: if I ever start publishing romances under the name of Debs-Anne Wittyflower, please hunt me down and kill me. It’s the only thing to be done.