Friday Fricassee

Probably I don't need to tell you how THRILLED I was to read all your comments yesterday.  So many fascinating tidbits about YOU!

(If you missed it yesterday, read SO TIRED OF BEING ANONYMOUS now, and add your own comments to the collection.)

My biggest disappointment this morning is that I can't find the poem my dad wrote for my twelfth birthday.  I thought I knew exactly where it was (I'm pretty organized with memorabilia), and I was planning on sharing it with you this morning.  Now I'm at a complete loss, because I have no idea where it is.

I'll keep looking.  (This poem is intensely precious to me, so I will likely obsess until I find it!)

Some of you asked about my choice to be anonymous.  When I started this blog in 2008, I was fairly active on the wonderful Blue Boards (I'm still over there, but hardly ever, sadly).  I was in the midst of my agent search, and enjoyed the camaraderie of others who, like myself, were playing the check-my-email-forty-times-day thing.  The Blue Boards have an "agents" section in which there are threads on individual agents, where writer share how long it took them to hear back, whether it was a request or a rejection, etc.  It was my favorite section, and there's a lot of "me" there.

I was already anonymous on the Blue Boards, because I didn't want to attach my real name to all those agent rejection/request comments.  So I decided to keep the same approach for my blog, which would give me the ability to discuss my querying process in general terms.  I also stopped posting my agent responses on the Blue Boards, because I didn't want there to be a connection between Authoress and actual agent names.

(Honestly?  That's a good policy for all writers to follow online.  No one needs to know which agents said yes, no, or maybe.  Keep it general.)

The idea for this blog came up suddenly--literally, I just had the thought, "Hey, I should start an anonymous blog for writers!" and that was that.  It wasn't any sort of nefarious, scheming, or even remotely clever thing.  Rather, it was an outgrowth of my already-anonymous presence, coupled with a desire to create a critique-based forum for aspiring authors.

And now, almost six years later, I'm still anonymous.

Yes, I have a circle of people who know the real me.  (No, you're not allowed to torture my critique partners for information.  They are all fiercely loyal.  And if they turn out not to be, they know it's at their own MORTAL RISK.)

(Well, okay.  Not really.)

I appreciate your allowing me to be me without really being me.  (Wow, what a great sentence.)  And I also appreciate your not needling me about the anonymous thing.  That may be because I really am as real as I can be here...and it may also be because you're just decent folk altogether.

And that's that!

Next week, I think I'll talk about why I'm doing something writers aren't really supposed to do.  Encouraged not to do.  Yet I am deliriously happy doing it, and really don't want to do anything else right now (including, yanno, talking to people and actually looking away from my monitor).

On that note, I will see you all next week.  Hugs to all!