Be True

Shakespeare said it best: This above all, to thine ownself be true.

It happened on the car ride home from another awesome CaRWA meeting. The realization that perhaps what I was doing was...

wait for it...

....

w-r-o-n-g

Gasp! See, I had a second pseudonym going and the a-ha moment was this: the second pseudonym wasn't me. I kept trying to hold myself to find the genre (urban fantasy) and it wasn't working. I wasn't writing and I (conveniently) blamed it on my heroine. Okay she was a little whiny but it could be because I kept taking away all the sexy moments. I like writing sexy moments. I'm good at it, damn it. So in trying to hold my writing style to fit something, I lost the gumption to write. I wasn't this other name/pseudonym. It was like a pair of really nice shoes: pretty to look at, the price was right but as soon as they went on the feet everything hurt.

I came home and closed my second (and rarely used Twitter account), pretty much shut down the site and I feel...

wait for it...

g-o-o-d.

It's like dead weight has fallen from my shoulders (though truthfully I'd rather it fall from the tummy area). Was that name hindering me? I really think it was. I was conforming myself. Sacrificing the one thing writer's hold sacred: my voice. I smothered me and that wasn't working. At. All. With this other name creation I had the thought "This would be something my mom could read." Wrong, wrong, so wrong.

I am me. The way I write is me. I never felt comfortable even using the name, again the shoes just weren't fitting. So that other me is gone. Banished.

It's time to return to what I do without any apologies. Not even to my mom. But especially not to my character. My bad. It won't happen again. Identity crisis...gone.

Being true to me. Cuz I loooove me and I loooooooove the way I write.