Your Writing Alias Is Holding You Back
You can't achieve greatness until you free yourself of the safety net.
Every word written came from an excavated heart. A heart struggling to beat, to pump, to maintain life.
The protective cage of bone and flesh around the thumping muscle ripped open. The heart, the very center of human emotion exposed. And yet every word dangling on the glowing computer screen blinks hollow. Empty. Everything true, yet shroud in a protective covering. A veil of distortion. A falsified barrier erected to permanently separate reader from writer.
The protective barrier of an alias.
The Safety Net of an Alias
Writing under an alias is writing without consequence. There’s a safety net always underneath the written word. Should something fail to connect, should it infuriate, should it offer false insights or lackluster storytelling the author will always land comfortably. The net saving them from any would-be consequences.
Writing should never be comfortable. It should always have consequences.
The written word is a dangerous thing. It can inspire and hurt and praise and demoralize. A reader absorbs every word. They have no mask for their brain or their heart or their soul. A reader cannot protect themselves from what they read. A sponge cannot pick and choose what liquid it absorbs. It simply pulls in as much as it can hold. The same is true with the brain and what it reads. The reader bears the brunt of everything presented. Shouldn’t the author share in some of that as well? The reader cannot hide behind the walls of an alias. They are who they are and they read what they read.
It is why I attach my name to everything I write. I don’t hide behind fake imagery or false titles. What I write is my identity. It is my consequence. Sometimes I don’t fully understand how others might take what I write. Life experience can tweak even the simplest of sentences. But that is also part of the beauty of word. When it’s honest and stripped down to the bone it affects everyone differently.
When you read something, when you’re emotionally exposed and open, your mind and soul are naked to what is on the page or screen. It can affect you. It can change you. It’s why I try to strip down and expose my own soul to you, warts and scars and blemishes and all.
If you’re going to experience writing as yourself, it’s only fair the author produces the writing as themselves as well.
Writing Should Never Be Comfortable
There’s a saying I’ve heard several times before, and almost always used to describe a completely different task.
“Get comfortable feeling uncomfortable.”
Most forms of success, in any walk of life, sits on the other side of comfort. Breaking free of comfort can be terrifying. You don’t know what you’ll find on the other side. It’s why so many reach the end of their comfort levels and stop. Why they don’t push forward.
Why they use an alias.
Hemingway famously said writing is easy, you simply cut yourself open and bleed onto the page.
If you cut an alias, does it bleed?
A writer under a falsified persona risks nothing. They may open up their feelings, talk about events and desires and events, and yet there’s no lifeblood pooled out onto the page as the reader’s reactions can never return to an author who doesn’t exist.
It’s comfortable writing. And comfortable writing is neutered writing.
An Alias Is Holding You Back
It’s impossible to fulfill your writing potential if you know there’s a safety net to catch you. If you know you know you can pull the plug and start over if what you say doesn’t sit well.
True writing can be terrifying. And yet exhilarating.
I’ve had some readers wish me death. I’ve been called every name you can think of (and probably some you can’t). And yet I’ve had others reach out, track me down, and voice how important one story, one paragraph, one line, was to them. How it resonated. How it gave them strength because they knew someone was willing to say it and stand behind it.
I’ve come to expect both sides when exposing myself, but when I expose myself as a writer I stand by everything I write. There’s nothing to hide. I push myself to the limits because I know there’s nothing to save me. It’s just me and the next word.
In the film The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce Wayne is cast aside into a deep pit, designed to hold the world’s worst prisoners. There’s a way out, for someone capable of climbing to the top and willing to jump to one final overhang. There’s a rope prisoners can tie around themselves, so if they fail to reach the other side of the jump, they do not fall to their death. Nobody ever successfully makes the jump, not even Bruce. At least until he frees himself of the rope. Until he frees himself of any second chance. It’s either jump and succeed or die.
Bruce makes it out because there’s no way to try it again. He must completely give it his all. When you know there’s a safety net, that you can try again or start anew, it’s almost impossible to squeeze everything out of you. To push yourself to exert everything you can in the one attempt. But when you free yourself of the net, there’s nothing to save you. The alias might be protecting you, but it’s also holding you back. It’s preventing you from putting everything you possibly can into your work.
Writing everything under your own name, standing by every word you scribe, can be terrifying. It’ll leave you exposed to the world. A world that is not forgiving and will claw away at your flesh if given the chance. But there’s also nothing more invigorating than being free of the bonds an alias creates. It’s a freedom you didn’t know existed, yet once you experience it, and feel it pushing you further than ever before, you’ll wish you would have ripped the protective veil of an alias away a long time ago.
Well said Greyson—though I do write fiction under an alias of sorts; I use my maiden name because I feel more me, more empowered than using my married name.