Hi there, you online peddler of different wares,
I’m not interested in what you sell at all. This isn’t a website that sells anything, unless you’re prepared to pay for advertising space. Even in that case, I’d still probably refuse to approve your ‘posts’. There are lots of places online where you can spam the world population to exhaustion.
Have a great day and stop trying to spam me. I bet you understand what I mean … Go and bother people elsewhere, FFJ
A couple of days ago, I had a great convo with a former Rugby Union legend, Enrique ‘Topo’ Rodríguez, which in itself deserves at least three blog posts. We discussed how a persona can preserve the person, in other words, how a pseudonym—my pseudonym, FF Jensen—allows a human being—in this case, the ‘real’ me—to strike out into a new arena—creative writing—keeping all other aspects of my private life away from intruding eyes—in other words, still private.
There’s also a very pressing reality: I need to pay my bills and I can’t make a living out of my creative writing just yet. My current supervisor-coordinator, or whatever you want to call them, has given me enough proof of narrow-mindedness and judgmentalism (Yuppy! I have invented a great word) and I never know what may come in my direction. Someone said, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to getcha.’ Problem is that in this case I’ve got more than enough evidence to mistrust this person.
In any case, there’s a fun story behind my nom de plume that I’d love to share with you: As soon as I finished writing ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ and knew that publication under my real name was a no-no, I started ‘shopping around’ for a pen name. I whiled my time away on the Behind the Name website, marvelling at how all the different random combinations kept coming, but there was nothing there that truly tickled my fancy. No ‘Yes!’ or ‘Eureka!’ moment.
A rather unconnected event brought in exactly what I was after. My partner is a member of a specialist forum where his nickname was abbreviated to ‘FF’. On a couple of occasions, I posted messages under my partner’s username, and one of his mates suggested I get my own username for that forum. It was the first time in my life I posted online under someone else’s name, which isn’t like me at all. I’ve been online since 1995 and never used ‘proxies’ (I surely used proxy servers, though). I’ve always been me, never anybody else (Hehe, my ‘digital fingerprints’ are everywhere now … If I were a ‘person of interest’ for the NSA, they’d catch me at the drop of a hat).
Whatever, you must be thinking. Cut to the chase, FF! Where does your pen name come from?
One of my partner’s friends posted a pic of a Jensen FF on that specialist forum. I can’t remember how it happened exactly, but the suggestion was that since I am Mr FF’s missus, I should join that forum as Jensen FF. The joke was over in less than ten minutes, but a ‘little seed’ was planted in my subconscious.
Back in January this year, I had a weird eureka moment. One morning, as soon as I woke up, I told my partner, ‘I think that my pseudonym should be FF Jensen.’ His reply was, ‘Honey, that might work.’ In a matter of days, I got the domain name for my website and started developing it. I even received an email from someone who wanted to buy spare parts for the Jensen FF! Hilarious …
Mind you, FF Jensen is pretty well established, but I sometimes find myself thinking whether I should publish my raunchy short stories under a different nom de plume. Or whether at some stage I’ll be happy to flaunt my real name. Who knows…? In any case, who cares? I don’t. The main thing is to keep on writing and enjoying it, all the while keeping the ‘head honcho’ in the dark.
Cheers, FFJ (from the Blue Mountains train)
Yes, you know who I’m talking about—and it isn’t this amazing creature.
I’m talking about those opportunistic ‘professionals’ who take advantage of creative people. We all want to create, right? We want to write, draw, paint, design, etc., and don’t want to invest that precious energy watching our backs.
The bad news is that we have to!
Have you ever heard about ‘vanity presses’? I bet you have. In the past, they were the only option if you wanted to become a published author without ending up in a traditional publisher’s slush pile. They’re called ‘vanity’ presses because they cater for the so-called ‘vain and whimsical’ who aspire to have their work published. Meh! For a start, if you’ve written a book, any book, on any topic, you aren’t vain or whimsical. You don’t deserve to be taken for a ride. You’ve done the hard yards and good on you! Trouble is that there are some who are ‘out to getcha’.
Case in point: A very good writer, Ellis Shuman, one of my highly respected Twitter mates, tells us about his experience with iUniverse, a vanity press that these days disguises itself as a self-publishing facilitator. I’ve done my research and found that vanity presses are operating by stealth these days. I have found a number of articles on this subject which shed light on an aspect of human nature that is as old as the hills: if you have a deep-seated and legitimate wish, there will be a bullshit peddler out there ready to sell you a shoddy bill of goods or services that will cost you a bundle and you’ll get nothing in return. I recommend you read this Savvy Book Writers blog post. Even Random House is mentioned as potentially treacherous for un-agented writers!
Indiefolk do it the hard way. Just to give an example of how hard, these days I’m juggling my ‘day job’, trying to finish a couple of short stories and sorting out my PR strategy. Mind you, I’m not complaining. Life isn’t meant to be easy and I’m a creative person at heart. I’m hard working too. All the same, the self-preservation learning curve seems to get in the way of it all.
In any case, let’s keep on smiling. Have a great day, FFJ 🙂