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‘We laughed!’ we cried.

Hello, hello, I have discovered my Peek’s Five Questions up over at benpeek‘s blog, along with a bunch of other interviews with a bunch of other people. I’m liking the way this is teasing out the individual thoughts of a complex system often simplistically referred to as ‘the scene’. Definitely worth checking out all week long.

In other online delights, Suzette Haden Elgin () has been running a series called ‘Writing Science Fiction: Novel Sales Problems. Part three is now online, & has to do with that old chestnut known as the midlist-pseudonym-dilemna. I admire her desire to stand behind her own author’s name despite publishing house pressure to ‘re-brand’. I wonder if I would do the same thing.

Truth is, I’ve never been particularly attached to my name. It started early, long before someone looked at the teenaged me & said, ‘You know, you don’t look like a Deborah.’ My name already always really has felt like a brand to me. I can take it or leave it. I’ve grown accustomed to the elaborate candelabra of its shape on a page, & now & then I play with it, giving it more of a European accent on the phone, for example, or leaving my surname off entirely when meeting someone new. ‘Just Deborah,’ I say.

So when it comes to novels, I think maybe — maybe, I’m saying, just maybe — I’d trade it in, save people what is apparently (or so I’m told) the trauma of knowing how to spell or pronounce it. If I had to re-brand, I think I probably would re-brand. I’m not so attached to it as all that.

But I admire ozarque.

Also, I like the description of writers as ‘typists with attitude’. *grin* I will SO endeavour to live up to that label now I’ve heard it.

And finally, a quote from Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives, by Anna Fels.

“Creating an ambition is a fundamental part of forming your identity, and once that is done, you must learn the appropriate skills. Perhaps most important, you must have the motivation to pursue your ambition over time and in the face of the inevitable obstacles. Such continued efforts require a belief that the goal is worth attaining and that you personally have the qualities required to attain it. It requires a sense of optimism and capability.”
— pp. 73

Next, kiddies, we will endeavour to discover whether it’s possible to entirely *manufacture* a sense of optimism & capability. ;))

Hugs!