Today is the day of I. To this point I’ve used this A-Z challenge to give you a hint of who I am. What I like and don’t like, how I spend my days (or weekends) and what my back yard looks like. (Yep. There’s a picture of my back yard in here somewhere!) However…
How much is too much?
I’m a writer, and am working hard at developing a career. So how much of the real me should I be putting into this website, and into my daily blogs? Should I let you know my politics? My religion? My education? Should I tell you all my deep dark secrets (which explains a fair bit about why I write what I write, to be honest.)?
Or should I be developing a persona (complete with backstory, written out in excruciating detail in one of my many scribblers) that hides the actual me, and then use it? I honestly don’t know.
How do the rest of you writers handle this? Especially those of you with more than one pen name. Are your personae different — or are your “writers” all the same person — you — with just a different name attached?
And what would the publishers rather see? The real writer, warts and all? Or something not quite real, that wouldn’t ruffle too many feathers and potentially sell more books?
At least one inquiring mind would really like to know.
Blogging is about upping my professional image. So, I put out a professional image … a persona. But it’s still me. I speak genuinely and I’m honest. So, it’s not an act.
I understand what you are saying. I put out three different types of books and used a different variation of my name for each of them.
Mary, how did you decide what your professional persona would look like, and what parts of you the public would be allowed to see? Do you have another blog where you discuss other aspects of your life, or do you just keep all of that to yourself? I can tend to rail against the badness I see out in the world — but I don’t feel comfortable putting this kind of thing in my blog anymore. (Used to. I had another blog that was, generally speaking, all about me yapping about things that I saw that outraged me in the world.) However, I feel that my blog has become milquetoasty because of it. So I guess my question is — how much is too much?
Hi Vanessa. Thanks for dropping by. You say they are 3 different types of books. I guess that the tone of the marketing (like website and blog) would be different for each. Do you find this easy or hard to do?