Who Goes There?

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Sometimes I would think I am insane, except that I don’t think I am.

Okay, so that statement was clear as mud.  Blame it on my blazing sinus headache.

What I mean is, sometimes I worry that I’m insane, then I read something written by my fellow authors and I realize that for my class and type of – admittedly – unusual critter, I am actually… well… no one would call us sane, but I’m probably normal.

Why would Pratchett say that the most important thing is to know which voice is yours, if his skull weren’t stuffed to the breaking point with voices that weren’t his?

Why would Nero Wolfe be to Rex Stout somewhat like a friend he hasn’t seen in a while but with whom he’s keeping in touch, so that years after the last book came out, Rex could answer with certainty what Nero was doing and what was fascinating him?

Why would Heinlein fight to kill a character?

Because they’re real – duh.

Oh, wait.  Please, don’t dial the men in white coats.  What I meant is, they’re real to us, authors.

What mechanism is it that makes it so?  Is it a sort of playing a chess game with your own subconscious?  Or is it a craft, a learning to suspend disbelief, so the readers can in turn ride on your certainty these people exist?

Who knows?  No real studies have been done on this.

Is it perhaps a mental illness that has useful side effects?  (Not that unusual.)  A genetic tendency to an odd form of schizophrenia which, by making it possible for the sufferer to subsist as a story teller (or in the older days, shaman) can and does pass on by conferring an advantage on the victim.

Or is it “real” – do some of us have some sort of weird transmitter/receiver at the back of our brain and do we capture stories that are events/potentialities in other time lines?

And what do you make of pen names?  You know the Pratchett thing, that once you name something it acquires a life of its own?  There are six people living in my head.  Sometimes the babble is deafening.  Recently a scientist friend wanted to hook me up to apparatus and see if the brain signals read as different persons while writing pen names.

I’m a little scared to find out.

The one thing I know for sure is that writing is not a cold, calculating, fully controlled enterprise.  Most of it feels like a journey of discovery to find out what the story REALLY is beyond the layers of nonsense it accretes on the way to my brain.

Yes, I’ve had characters talk to me.  I’ve also had characters lie to me.  I’ve had people I wanted to be villains turn good, and vice versa.

And now I’ve had a decent Urban Fantasy, wot had never done any harm to anyone turn into a … uh… weird science fiction.

It’s not the other people in my head I mind so much.  It’s the fact they won’t talk to me, one on one, adult to adult.

And I’m not crazy at all.  Most writers are like this.  Some just lie better.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to say: A Fatal Stain is out today.

110 thoughts on “Who Goes There?”

  1. Don’t forget the fans and how they come to think of the characters as real people. Some get very upset when the character does something the fan doesn’t agree with. Face it, characters are real, living in the either, looking for writers to give them a voice.

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    1. Yes, and there’s a point (maybe the moment the book is published and is read by an audience?) where the author may not even own the book and characters anymore, where they really take on a kind of existence of their own, shared by every reader who believes in them, though the author acts as a sort of high priest for them.

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        1. The day that my spouse said, “You know, [that book] has this sub-theme about [X] in it,” and I said, “…you know, you’re right!” — well, that’s the day that I pretty much internalized that authorial intent is just part of what’s in a story. Things get in there on their own, too, and that’s before other people bring their own headstuffs to the reading!

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          1. I became convinced of this years ago, when my girlfriend was taking two-dimensional visual design. One of her projects was to do a collage with a theme. She chose to do a collage about her relationship with me, which showed among other things the figure of Laurie Anderson standing above us, larger than life, and making a gesture of blessing.

            As she was finishing it, I looked at it closely, and said, “You know, that’s a lot like the Zurburán painting in your last project”—which had been to take a classic painting and identify the design in terms of large areas of color, for which she picked Zurburán’s painting of the ascension of Thomas Aquinas. So she got out both the project and her reproduction of the original painting, and compared them all—and they all had similar design elements, point for point, not to mention the theme of blessing that they shared. But she had had not thought of doing any such thing and was surprised when I pointed it out!

            This made me a lot more sympathetic to the legendary literature professor who responded to Isaac Asimov’s arguing against an interpretation of his work by pointing out that he was the author, by saying, “Why do you think that means you know anything about it?” In fact, I’d say one of the payoffs of a good reader is that they may show you things about your own work that you weren’t aware of.

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            1. There is a reason they call the subconscious a sub-conscious. Which leads to the suggestion that, while an author’s conscious may seem perfectly well integrated, it could be that the subconscious might be fractured and sometime fractious.

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      2. Don’t forget the fans and how they come to think of the characters as real people. Some get very upset when the character does something the fan doesn’t agree with. Face it, characters are real, living in the either, looking for writers to give them a voice.

        That is a concern of mine, albeit a minor one. My antagonist is truly an awful, horrible being, however, this is not revealed until very late in the third act of the third novel (as currently outlined). Prior to that, the character is designed to be beloved by the reader, specifically and purposefully. He’s an alien, so there’s that weirdness about him, but he becomes more and more easy around humans as the story progresses.

        There are outright examples of his love for his new companions as well as loyalty and sacrifice. It all makes sense in the twelve dimensional game of chess he’s playing, but it will read like he’s the best buddy of the main character in book one, mentor/unofficial uncle to the son and grandson in books two and three.

        When the readers get to that last part and realize that almost each and every horrible, awful thing that has happened over the intervening decades is his fault, and that he’s not only responsible for, but full of glee and pride about it, it may not sit well with some folks.

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        1. Foreshadowing is your friend. Not enough to tip your hand, but sufficient so the reader immediately upon concluding the series turns to the first book to “see how it was all set up!”

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          1. That is exactly my mindset. In homage to “Sixth Sense” I started a file called “Red Doorknobs” that contains a list of the tells across all three stories that will be “A-HA!” moments when they go back and look at them. Further, I’ve got at least two incidents where a doubter (currently named Thomas…is that too cheesy?) has his misgivings come to a head in a scene where he holds a pistol on the alien. At the end of the trilogy, a reader should be able to look at that and realize…omg…if he had just pulled the trigger, more than 20 billion lives would not have been lost.

            I’ve got a number of those things in the story, including a very telling conversation with a member of the clergy, that will be A-HA moments.

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  2. Don’t get me started. My only saving grace is that my characters are generally polite, and usually wait their turn in line. Although occasionally I wake up in the morning with one of them screaming, “WRITE ABOUT ME TODAY!!!!” at the top of his/her voice. Pushy bastard.

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  3. I don’t know that the inside of my head is all that complicated when it comes to writing – like Kim’s, my characters are also polite, obedient and wait their proper turn – although one or two of them now and again get ideas of their own. Or I get an idea, sometimes at the very last minute, which completely changes everything. In the last book but one, I didn’t really want to write a long protracted death for a key character (chronic tuberculosis, which would have been messy and graphic) and I had a sudden thought – what if I had it happen off-stage? And then I had a sudden inspiration for a reason to make it happen that way, which put a bit of a dark shadow on the character, AND affected a key relationship, AND set up one and possibly two fiture story-lines, AND allowed me to work through some old real-life resentments.

    My father, who was one of the most rational, non-imaginative people I knew, asked me once, how I ‘see’ a scene or a character; he said, “Is it like a movie in your head?” And I had to say, it wasn’t quite that – it’s more like constructing an imaginary scale-model miniature, and then putting the characters into it … and then just writing down what happens next.

    It is a bit of a kick though – to have made characters so real, and so believable, that readers cry over them when they die.

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  4. This sort of thing does a lot to explain how free will fits into a theistic worldview: The characters say things to the creator like “No, damn it, I’m going to eat that damned fruit!” and the creator has to find a way to make the story work with it.

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    1. A friend, a fledgling writer, has one character who quietly but persistently insisted that his life was not going to be planned out for her or anyone else’s convenience. No, he was not going to die in battle, he had dreams worth living for, story be damned.

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      1. This sort of thing does a lot to explain how free will fits into a theistic worldview: The characters say things to the creator like “No, damn it, I’m going to eat that damned fruit!” and the creator has to find a way to make the story work with it.

        This reminds me of a graphic novel I was paging through in a store more than ten years ago. I have long since wished I could remember the title or the writers.

        Basically, Satan tires of fighting with God constantly and goes off to create his own universe. He does his own Genesis thing, right down to creating a naked man and woman. The difference, though, is that he gives them no rules, no commandments, no forbidden fruit. They are completely free to do whatever the hell they want, and he leaves them to it, popping in once and a while to talk to them.

        Enter God in the form of, you guessed it, a serpent. The serpent starts talking to the “Adam” character, and engages him in a philosophical debate, basically making the point that without laws, without structure, there’s simply no reason for existence (I’m paraphrasing badly and not getting the argument correct…it’s been ten years, but I remember being very impressed with the reasoning). The “Adam” character thinks about this for a long time and eventually, he and the “Eve” character go back to Satan and want him to end their existence.

        It ends with a long discussion between Satan and God.

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        1. That sounds like “Lucifer,” published as part of DC’s Vertigo line. Or almost like. The way I remember the story, Lucifer creates a man and a woman, and gives them only one commandment: You shall not worship any god, or you will die. And they worship Lucifer, and, well. . . . That sounds different enough so that I’m not positive it’s the same story, but I think you can see why your summary makes me think of it.

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      2. “quietly but persistently”

        Umm, yeah, if arms crossed, radiating disdainful comtempt can be called quiet and writer’s block until I changed the sketchy outline of the scene where he sacrifices his life to save . . .can be called persistent.

        Sheesh, life planned out for him? I’m surprised he didn’t wind up a pirate the way he swashed, buckled and occasionally screamed his way through the book. My plans were nothing, to that man.

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          1. I just don’t have these problems. It could be because I’ve not gotten sufficiently in sync with my characters yet. Frankly, they just do what the hell I tell them to. I think my ability to impose my will on these people, no matter how ridiculous, comes from over three decades of mentally directing all-female ensembles in, um…other types of fiction…yeah, that’s it…

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              1. Feh. I have that b**ch hogtied in the back room and only take the gag out on alternate Tuesdays.

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                1. Odd.

                  Literally read that sentence from you and mine smacked me in the back of the head with a ballpeen. First the title, out of no where “Ghost Road”, then a quick idea.

                  What if there was a haunted route you could travel across America, by car, bike, horseback, on foot…doesn’t matter. A route with a very specific routes and very specific stops. What if everyone knew about it, but very, very few people ever undertook the journey? What if actually doing the route started unlocking skills, powers, and abilities beyond those of normal people? What if the downside was that, once the journey was completed, the “Roaders” would have to live with ghosts, both benevolent and not, for the rest of their lives? All of that against the backdrop of a modern world that suddenly has to come to grips with the reality of the afterlife. Maybe date the start of the new environment as December 22nd, 2012 :)

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                    1. Without doing a search, I’m quite sure there’s been a “Ghost Road” or two or twelve. It seems like a gimmie.

                      After I posted that, I started jotting down (er typing) notes and they just kept comin’.

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                  2. Thanks a lot, Scott. Now I have a young Roader opera singer in my head who *thought* she wanted those gifts and is incredibly fed up with the dead after passing just a few Waystations. I’ve got a few hunches about what the progression is tied to, since in my head the ghosts change as you travel further along the Road. You just gave me and Idea Scott; may Heaven have mercy on you, for I will not. /mockglare I hope you’re willing to share some of the details your muse is spitting out, because mine likes to throw ideas out and then cling to the details like an octopus on a rock.

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                    1. I’m up for a shared project :) Previous Roaders, now dead, either helping, discouraging, or downright just preventing new people from going. Parts of the route on private property causing ruffled feathers with the living as well. Definitely different ghosts/entities at the different Waystations. Rules regarding safety for the travelers, rules BETWEEN travelers. The list grows…

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                    2. Spooky – I had most of the same, though I thought the ghost who was a deceased Roader was a handy plot device – I got the feeling they were uncommon. Living Roaders can interact with ghosts in the [term needed] between their last Waystation and their next. Deceased Roaders can interact with ghosts in the adjoining [term needed]s as well. I’m not sure what the point of the living/dead interaction is – the whole ‘help them do what they didn’t in life’ is so cliche, but I’m not sure what else the dead would want with the living. Well, other than the hungry ones. /shiver If you want to move this to a private channel, you can email me at freerangeoyster aht Google’s email service.

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                    5. That depends on the nature of the environment. There’s a slider from from non-sentient echos, beings that are just shards of former fully sapient ghosts, all the way up to the recently deceased still with full faculties. Of course, it could also be that there is no rhyme or reason to it.

                      Usually with something like this I would try to decide the endgame, then start asking “why is this the way” questions until I get all of them answered. That provides a solid skeleton (no pun) to build on even if some/most of it doesn’t make it into the story. I think consistency is king with things like this.

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                    7. Possibly. Like GRRM’s Wild Cards. Set up the origin story, set up the rules, and maybe some stock characters and a very loose chronology…and let the writers go nuts with it.

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                    8. There is a huge vein to mine here. Divisions between Roaders about which method of travel gets the best results, from walking purists and drivers to mix-em-up-depending-on-the-route types. Tapping into the various ghost myths around the country and its various sub-cultures. Answering the mystery of why this happened and what it means, not to mention encounters between fully traveled Roaders who have completed their journeys, both protag and antag.

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                    9. (Looks around. Buffs knuckles on shirt) Can I instigate stuff or what?

                      (Walks off whistling)

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        2. Hmmm, I wonder if he’s my character’s cousin. He appeared, refused to leave the stage and announced that not only was he staying for the next act but that he intended to marry the MC. How was I to know that they’d been friends since, well, quite a while? I’m just the author!

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          1. I had to go back and rewrite an early chapter to make it clear that he was the father of her child. Takes him a book and a half to finally admit to that bit of magical impersonation. It did work, in my weird magical community. Honest.

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      1. You had no way of knowing it, because this is the first thread I’ve commented on. But yes, I follow our host’s writing; she and I have common political sympathies and a shared love of sf.

        You are archangelbeth, aren’t you? Your textual body language looks familiar. But I had no idea you were one of the habituées here.

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        1. As an aside, I’m glad I’m not the only one to notice textual body language. Quite a few of my friends get really pissed off when I know their mood with no other cues except their word choices and, well, timing if it’s in instant message. They can be using smilies and exclamation points and I’ll still know they’re not chipper. (I suspect that’s not entirely uncommon for writers or voracious readers or text roleplayers, but since all of my really close friends are one of the three and some of them are all of the three and they’re still surprised… Hm.)

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  5. When I was put on high dosages of prednisone, the doctors asked me if I was hallucinating (visual or aural). My husband piped up and asked, “More than usual?” When we explained that I was a writer, one of the doctors nodded his head sagely and said, “well that is a problem.”

    Yes, I had several hallucinations on prednisone, which according to the literature means that I have either a mild form of schizophrenia or a potential for schizophrenia. Urp.

    As for characters, I have never met a more stubborn bunch. When I go the wrong way with the plot, they shut down and refuse to move or talk until I find the offending direction and change it. For me it is less seeing or hearing them… it is more like being them. Some people go WWJD, I go “What Would My Character Do.”

    Am I insane? Yes. Am I totally insane? No. When I first started writing, I would have to blend from me into the character. Now when I write it is almost instantaneous. I don’t know what I would do if I changed my name (as in pen names). I thought of doing it… and then I decided to keep my name. It is what I am and I hold onto it tightly especially after my experience with the meds.

    BTW on the meds, I actually became characters. My hubby had to stop my reading because I had turned into Douglas Adams Detective Dirk Gently.

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    1. Ahhhh meds. Would Coleridge or Dylan Thomas been better writers, or worse, without them? I would say: probably worse.
      I myself write better when sober (I think). I’m too afraid to get whacked and then write, and I don’t have to take prescription medications which alter my so-called consciousness.
      Whenever I’m asked the question, I always reply that I have enough troubles with an imagination fettered by reality, thank you. I have NO idea what demons and goblins would be released by opiates, and frankly, I’m too scared to experiment. My guess is that it would probably be total crap — which is another gloomy thought, because it means that sober, I’m as good as I’m gonna get.
      Why yes: I have just finished reading Dickens’s A Christmas Carol; why do you ask?

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      1. LOL – Oh Kim… I did learn something about myself with these experiences. I write crap when I am having the hallucinations. I write better sober. Oh yea, I am still on meds, but not on the high levels that cause hallucinations. I think the meds have altered my brain chemistry some.

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      2. Years ago I lived across the street from a young woman who thought that the key to writing like Faulkner was to drink like Faulkner. Unfortunately, she did not have the constitution of Faulkner. When she drank like him she wrote, if she was able to write at all, gibberish Fortunately she did finally connect with AA.

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          1. I actually write very well when just slightly elevated – about a glass and a half of Chardonnay – and the prose just flows, for about two hours or so. I’ve written some of my most lyrical discriptions that way. But any more than that glass and a half, and it falls off, as the typing goes to s**t.

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              2. My typing goes all to heck when I get too elevated. Fingers and the keyboard just don’t connect, after a certain point. But I’m good … right up to that point.

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          2. Sadly, when she got trashed she was a sloppy drunk. It was a perfect demonstration of garbage in garbage out, if anything came out at all. Some people should not drink; she was one of them.

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      3. I don’t know — most of the times I’ve been on heavy meds (oxycontin), I didn’t notice a change, but my family did. I just s l o w e d down to the point where it took me DAYS to do anything. I haven’t had any serious problems that I’ve noted on the gabapentin, but it’s supposed to be one that CAN change your personality. I keep a close eye on it. The good news is that for the first time in forever, my pain level is more or less under control. We’ll see how long it lasts, but it’s pretty darned good for me NOW.

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      4. Yeah, I don’t need drugs or alcohol to get into an altered state… and yes, I’m a bit wary if not scared of doing so. For me, my loosest writing is done in the wee hours, preferably when just tired enough to be half falling asleep but not so tired that I am too tired to do any actual writing. If I get it at just the right balance, I can go for hours until my eyes start closing and then come back the next time and read it over and go, “I have no recollection of writing this, but I really like this bit… and wow, I didn’t even notice THAT but thanks for pointing it out, dream-writing brain.”

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  6. My characters tend to wander in while I’d doing something else, or dance in. Yes, dance. Classical music brings in characters, who hang around after the songs stop. Then a plot idea bubbles up and the character that fits best claims the plot.

    I wonder if story-carriers who couldn’t control the manifestations became shamen or visionaries, and those who could channel the characters became story-tellers and bards.

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  7. I never really believed in this phenomenon until writing my latest book. A lot of the characters argued with me in the voice I imagined for them on this or that particular point in the book. One in particular that I intended to kill off was particularly argumentative with me. I swear I heard him in my mind very stubbornly saying, “No no no, that’s not what I would do at all.” And then he would argue schemes and tactics that allowed him to survive. It was very creepy like I was possessed by a spirit I dreamed into existence. Its a curious business.

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  8. What if you were but a character inside some writer’s head, conceiving your own characters in turn, one of whom, being a writer, dreamed up you. Entire religions have been based on less.

    I think I shall have to reread Typewriter In The Sky.

    I am quite sure I have previously suggested that all people (actual and virtual) are but extrapolations of consistency based upon observed behaviour (e.g., in this community, energized phosphor dots, or whatever your monitor uses to enlighten.) Discrimination based upon external reality seems a form of … something-ism.

    I await an author’s effort to claim an income tax exemption for dependent characters.

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      1. Somewhere in there lies a Turing Test joke, but I am as yet insufficiently caffeinated to hack through the forest of thought and clear away the scrub brush.

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      2. A good writer allows the characters to tell their own story, free of deus ex machina or forced plotting. As has previously been discussed, Holden Caulfield’s story takes a very different turn in a RAH novel (for a start, he grows up.)

        You want this tale you’re living to be Human Wave, you know what to do.

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          1. Katyn Forest’s massacre would be on the positive side of the spectrum of bad endings. I can think of much worse.

            Ours is a gracious writer, giving us opportunities for glory. There’s no glory in having Gwaihir simply fly over and drop off the One Ring.

            Glory sucks.

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  10. I so want you to hook yourself up and see what the brainwaves say when you take on your different personas. :-)

    And yes, I’ve had characters in my head since I was three (possibly even earlier), though this was more a factor of being a fan of various tv shows and wanting to insert myself via a character into the shows. (Visual media makes imaginary characters very real.) I’m most surprised by the characters that WON’T tell me things, and give me dirty looks when I ask.

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    1. Play It Again, Sam, Woody Allen’s 1972 film (back when he was only ordinarily creepy, before we knew he was ewwww creeeepy) depicts this phenomenon quite well, with Allen’s character accompanied (and coached) by the specter of Humphrey Bogart.

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  11. My characters are a collection of unredeemed bastards who tell me what they think I need to know – and those are the good guys. There’s a reason I say that my writer-gateway is a direct line to Evil Bastard Central.

    Which, I might add, has decided to infest me with an establishment purveying items of interest to the discerning eldritch horror. And sells the merely sensual items in plain black wrappings, these things being seriously perverse to eldritch and demonic beings. It does not help that there is a betentacled something wiggling its tentacles at me in a come-hither fashion.

    And this is what happens when I’m – mostly – sane and my meds are well controlled.

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  12. I wonder if brainwaves would show differences between writing in various POVs? Or would it take a change in the person doing the writing, AKA a pushy pen name to make a difference? If any. I think we all ought to volunteer.

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  13. This is a phenomenon I’ve been aware of but had not experienced myself yet. Then I started a very short rant a couple of nights ago, rewriting it in my head as a rhetorical exercise. Then I realized it wasn’t really in my voice anymore. And then I could see, roughly, the character whose voice it was. What started as my rant had become his monologue to another character I can’t see yet. My poor wife was left looking on in amused confusion as I started grumping and snarling about how I didn’t have time for a character in my head and I’d never had them take up residence and I didn’t have energy right now and ended up shaking my finger at the ceiling (where else do you look to address people in your head? A mirror?) and shouting “I’m not writing any stories tonight, you can just wait, got it?” He’s not talking to me yet – he’s still consulting with his allies on how to retake his kingdom – but I fear it’s only a matter of time. I don’t want to write fiction right now! /pout

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    1. I can’t say I’ve had quite THAT kind of experience, but I have had characters take over completely, with me just along to pound the keys. It’s surprising, sometimes, what appears on the screen, since it wasn’t what I intended at all. That’s happened four times so far in my current novel. Maybe I can get everything connected in the end.

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      1. I LIKE it when they do that, that makes the story flow, and make sense. It is when I have to force things that I run into problems. Kind of like using a metric bolt in a standard nut, you can force it, and it will probably hold together, but it just ain’t right; and you better hope you never need to take it apart to work on something else. Because it ain’t going back together again!

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      2. Just as long as it doesn’t start to resemble herding cats.

        I really can see it: An author. A keyboard. A groan. Looking back through the story everyone started in the same world, the same universe and the same time stream. At no time did anything illogical happen (within the context of the story) , but, for the life of you, you cannot figure how the hero and heroine will ever meet again. Oh, no, that’s Witchfinder, and is therefore Sarah’s problem to solve. Nevermind. ;-)

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  14. ” There are six people living in my head. Sometimes the babble is deafening. Recently a scientist friend wanted to hook me up to apparatus and see if the brain signals read as different persons while writing pen names.

    I’m a little scared to find out.”

    A pity we can’t train rats to write then. I’d be fascinated to see the results.

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  15. I have probably told the anecdote of when I wanted to write a specific story — a folktale/myth thing for my fictional world — and I could not do it. Until I asked one of my characters (a storyteller of a kind) to come tell it. And then… there were words.

    Other spurts of inspiration happen when I am sifting the litterboxen, or in the shower, or needing to get to sleep — and much to my disgust, during the school year Sleep trumps everything. *sigh*

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  16. I thought about putting in a call to the “nice young men in the clean white coats”, but then I realized that you’ve built your own asylum here, where everyone checks in voluntarily, so I figured it would be a waste of effort.

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      1. I’m really just jealous, anyway. *I* don’t have any imaginary friends. It gets lonely in here sometimes… :-)

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    2. I call dibs on the next outing with Harvey.

      Or should I be preparing for a hunting trip to Africa? There is a happy dale…

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            1. I think I have seen parts of that movie, but I seem to remember thinking it was a Twilight Zone, or Outer Limits episode.

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              1. This is embarrassing, but my first exposure to the rabbit reference “Harvey” was the drunk in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” making a joke about it. I went back and watched the movie afterwards, which was quite a trick back then given the complete lack of Netflix. Or the internet. Or a PC. And we had a betamax. And…

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              2. We think it’s our Havey (short for Havelock) because, you know, it’s a white animal of unusual size who takes you on an unexpected adventure from which you emerged changed. It fits. Havey is not six feet tall, but he tips the scales at 16 lbs and, with his massive fuzz, looks bigger. And life with him in an adventure and well… we never intended to adopt him. Or keep him. Or…

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                1. Such temerity. Nobody adopts a cat, the cat adopts them and all it asks for this courtesy is food, water, pettings, comfy places to sleep and a clean litterbox.

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  17. I’ve been thinking of my pen name lately in that sense. The issue of its gender is very sensitive to them. They don’t want to be a “he” or a “she” when I refer to them. It becomes very awkward for me to refer to the pen name, because the pen name would rather I call it “it” than use a gendered pronoun and calling a person an “it” bothers me – but using “them” and “they” can get very confusing. u_u;

    The pen name’s writing style is a little blunter and while not “masculine”, it’s certainly less “feminine” than my usual. I’m pretty sure the more I write with them, the more their writing voice will diverge even further from my own. I also have little insights to their personality and it’s not really my own. It’s a little creepy sometimes, as I never expected that.

    I suppose I should have, considering my history with writing characters and all. But I just thought it wouldn’t happen with a pen name, since all I was doing with it was writing stuff I didn’t want my dentist, the neighbor, ex-boyfriends, and mortal online enemies to find and identify as “me” and speculate about things contained within. It’s not like I ever had intentions of the pen name jaunting around being social. But there they are, quiet and brooding in the back of my head. I worry about my pen name and hope it gets a dog or something. (Nope, nevermind. Mentioned ‘dog’ and was informed that, like me, it preferred cats as companions. I’m surprised since they mention dogs in their writing all the time.)

    Good lawd almighty. I think I’ll stop here since it’s stuff like this that will get me into trouble one day.

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    1. Maybe your pen name is a Eunuch? Castrated before pubescence to prevent formation of secondary sex characteristics?

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      1. I’ve been thinking of my pen name lately in that sense. The issue of its gender is very sensitive to them. They don’t want to be a “he” or a “she” when I refer to them.

        For some reason that reminded me of the pink-dreadlocked nightmare that is Lana Wachowski.

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