I’ve been wondering lately what I would write if I had a pseudonym, if I wrote with some super-secret name. Countless women over countless centuries have hidden their gender behind the veil of masculine pen names, an effort to be received fairly in an inequitable world.
Louisa May Alcott (A.M. Barnard)
Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot)
Charlotte Bronte (Currer Bell)
Emily Bronte (Ellis Bell)
Nora Roberts (J.D. Robb)
My query has nothing to do with gender or opportunity; more, with wanting complete freedom and total permission. Let me repeat that (for myself, if not for you):
Complete freedom and total permission.
My clear and endless desire for these things, begs two more deeper questions:
1. What is it that prevents me from telling my story and speaking my truth in full disclosure and full volume?
2. Why do I not live and move (and write) from these places already?
And those two prompt two more:
1. What if I did?
2. What if you did?
May it be so.