Æsthetic – Page 54 – Deborah Makarios

March 18, 2016

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.

March 4, 2016

Preparing for an Uncertain Future

No, I’m not suggesting that we should all become preppers. It’s a good idea to be prepared for whatever kind of natural disaster your area is prone to, but I don’t think it pays to mortgage your present for a merely possible future.

I have, however, been preparing for a change this past month. At the beginning of February it seemed distinctly possible that by the time the month was out we would have moved to a house half the size of the one we currently live in. And while that didn’t happen, I still needed to prepare in case it did.

Cue a major pruning. So major, in fact, that I gave up the idea of writing for the month (apart from keeping up with the blog, obviously) and didn’t bother with trying to keep a purge list, because it would have taken too long. The downside of that is that I have trouble remembering everything that has left our house (a sure sign that we had too much stuff).

There was a whole boxful of kitchen things, including the sole survivor of my first ever set of wineglasses (the other three leapt to a glittering end during the first Canterbury earthquake); there were more books, some cassette tapes and CDs, a variety of clothing (some so worn that it had to be binned), and half a recycling bin’s worth of stuff I’d been keeping in my desk. Also a whole bunch of what might be described as general stuff.

I’ve also been working on my stash of unfinished projects – important for peace of mind, freed-up space, and maintaining my Finishing-Person reputation. The crazy quilt was finished last year, it is true, but that still left me with the rose quilt (a project even older than the crazy quilt, if my memory serves me correctly at this distance), a pair of half-knitted gloves, a block quilt to be assembled, a cardigan to be knitted from recycled wool, and a large backlog of mending.

During February I made progress on the rose quilt, finished the gloves, and did most of the mending – there’s just one more waistband to be done and it’ll be finished. I am pleased with my progress, but also horrified at how much work there still is to be done. The Grand Purge is now mostly finished, and I’m back to writing (or rather rewriting) in March, but chaos, as ever, still lurks on the horizon.

Chaos, you ask? In a post-purge household? Well, yes. While we didn’t end up moving into the half-the-size house, we may find ourselves three weeks from a move at any time. This is exciting, but also somewhat stressful, particularly since we have no idea what size house we’ll end up moving to, and therefore whether or not a further Grand Purge will be required to fit. Because as much as we’ve got rid of, there’s always more that could be pared away. Like the rest of life, our simplicity is a work in progress – but the progress is feeling good.

February 19, 2016

Breaking Out of the Box

We tend to judge people the moment we meet them. Not condemn them, necessarily, but judge them. We find a suitably labelled box, and we pop them into it. Let us be honest: we all do it; and it isn’t always a bad thing. When you only have a few minutes’ experience of someone, you only get a sense of one or two dimensions of their character, and you need to proceed according to what you do know.

The problem comes when we try to keep people in that box when it doesn’t fit. When we refuse to admit that they have more than one or two dimensions to their character. (Pride & Prejudice, anyone?) When we make sweeping assumptions about what else is true of them, based on what else we keep in that box.

People often file me in the “Christian” box. This wouldn’t be so bad (since I do consider myself a Christian) but one of the fastest ways to wind me up is to make assumptions about me based on what else you’ve filed in there.
Believe me, people keep some weird stuff in that box.

I also get filed in the “young person” box a lot. This, despite the fact that people who started primary school the year I finished high school will now have finished high school themselves. OK, I’m not exactly old, but I don’t fit the “young person” stereotype. Neither do a lot of young(er) people. We aren’t all into drugs and loud music. Some of us prefer to stay home and knit. Or hang out and knit. Or crochet. Or debate theology late into the night…

And then there’s the whole gender box complex. Even if your culture accepts that there are different ways of being male, or female, people still expect you to pick one and stick to it.

Example: a man may take an interest in sports. He may also take an interest in flower arranging (and I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you what else people keep in that box). People don’t expect a man to play rugby on Saturday morning and then go home and start messing about with roses, oasis, and variegated foliage. It makes them uneasy, as people tend to be when they find someone in two boxes at once. (Like Schrödinger’s cat, but with more boxes and less cruelty to animals.)

Or, to consider an example closer to home (my home, anyway), people have a box for the kind of woman who does hands-on stuff like reproofing an oilskin with homemade waterproofer; and they have a box for the kind of woman who wears floral dresses and aprons about the house. But I am here to tell you that it is perfectly possible to reproof an oilskin while wearing a floral dress (and you definitely want to be wearing an apron).

I did it a couple of weeks ago, using this bloke’s recipe, or something like it. I didn’t have raw linseed oil, so I used wood oil instead. And I didn’t exactly measure anything. It worked, though the surface still feels a little tacky to the touch. After letting it cure in the sun for a week, I tested its waterproofness – with a small watering can, since it hadn’t rained so much as half a millimetre for a fortnight – and yup. Job done.

At the end of the day, you are who you are. Don’t bother trying to be someone else to please someone else (or avoid upsetting their prejudices). Like Cinderella’s evil step-sisters who each cut off a bit of their foot to fit in the shoe – no, that wasn’t in the Disney version – you won’t be able to sustain the deception, and you’ll end up with no prince and a munted foot.

And don’t feel guilty if you sort people into boxes yourself. Just be sure to leave the lid off.