Essay 11

Essay 11: Should I Be Me or Mason Dixon

I have read several books of essays by Dinty Moore whose name is also a widely recognized brand of Beef Stew. It is a catchy name and I thought maybe I should have a catchy pen name or nom de plume, as they say. I began to think about my Second Life avatars and Mason Dixon popped into my head. For those of you who are not familiar with Second Life, it is a virtual world where you create avatars to represent you. Your avatar can be anything from a human, to a furry, to a robot, to something so freaky that it defies the imagination. I stuck with human avatars although I did go a bit overboard creating more than 200 of them. But I had lots of fun.

“Why so many?”, you might ask. I was a developing writer at the time having written the first three Wentworth detective novels and I greatly enjoyed creating characters for stories. In Second Life, I could create characters and then test them out. It was a dream come true. I even created an academy where I could teach others how to create believable characters in Second Life. If you want to explore different aspects of your personality or experiment with ideas for different characters, Second Life is a sandbox worth visiting. But I am digressing.

Mason Dixon was a writer, perhaps a thinly veiled alt ego. In fact, one of many thinly veiled alter egos. He even has a publication to his credit. Somebody I encountered in Second Life was asking for stories that took place in Second Life for a website they were creating. I wrote one under the by line of Mason Dixon and it was accepted. I wish I had taken better notes at the time because I would like to see if it is still online. Mason was also interviewed at some point by a journalist about being a writer in Second Life. But you have to keep in mind that everything in a virtual world is fantasy. So, you do not know what is real and what is not. I don’t know if the website for stories was ever created.

Clearly the story was written by me and not Mason Dixon. It was me being interviewed by the journalist and not Mason Dixon. And, as far as I knew, the journalist could have been a twelve-year-old girl playing dress up. But here is the weird thing (if this isn’t weird enough already). If the journalist had interviewed another one of my avatars, the interview would have gone differently. If a different avatar had written the story, it would have been a different story.

There is an interesting connection between creating avatars in Second Life and creating characters in a story. Each character is part of the author, and each avatar is part of the person who created it. We could stretch this a bit and apply it to acting as well. Each character portrayed by an actor is part of that actor. And each character, whether it be in a story, in a movie, or in a virtual world must behave consistently, or at least as consistently as a real person would behave.

So, to get back to the main question, should I hide behind Mason Dixon for a really cool name, or should I be upfront and use my own name? Maybe I could simply refer to him as my fictional friend and slip in and essay or two under his name. Is it OK to have a fictional friend? Is it OK to have a character come to life? Well, it has been done before. And I guess the answer is if it works it will be great. But if it flops, you'll look like an idiot. I don't think fear of looking like an idiot should be a factor. But, of course, it is.

Do you think I need to think about it more? There are many possibilities. I could have a lot of fictional friends which would provide very different perspectives. My fictional friends could write pieces in which they refer to their fictional friends. There are lots of creative possibilities and that is what is needed for good writing.

However, I ultimately decided to write using my own name. Here is the reason. Mason Dixon is much more sensitive than I am. He is afraid that he might offend people or put them off. He is concerned about being liked. I am far less sensitive than he is, far less romantic, and I am not concerned about being liked. So, if I wrote under the name of Mason Dixon, I would have to limit myself to things that Mason would say. And I am not willing to accept that constraint.

Send an email to me at drjohnartz@gmail.com if you have a comment on any of my essays. And please check out my website at DrJohnArtz.com to see other things I have written.