auto-neurotic as-fiction-ation

an essay about anonymity as it relates to Substack fiction

A pretentious sentence adorns my Substack bio:

"Attempting to forgo the modern need for mimetic veracity in storytelling."

This, of course, refers to my nom de plume, 'Clancy Steadwell', chosen tongue-in-cheek via the "porn name" method explained to me in grade school: taking one's pet's name and the street they grew up on.

What do I mean by it? And why do I continue to toil behind what some might consider this ill-conceived façade? The idea originates from my feelings about fiction and its relative struggles as compared to non-fiction, not just on Substack but in our society at large.

I recently came across an image on Substack of ‘must-read books’, some thirty texts laid out and displayed on some table somewhere.

Not a single novel among them.

Ostensibly, books are a collection of knowledge that one must acquire and reading them is the only way to do so.

Substack itself subscribes to this shallow sentiment vis-à-vis reading. Their advice for crafting your About page is: "This page should explain in detail the benefits of reading your publication."

Benefits. In other words, what do people get out of this? You're asking a lot when you put words somewhere.

It’s apparent that the masses want reading to be instructive or prescriptive. If we are going to take the time and effort to read, it must be a transactional activity at the end of which we have acquired some knowledge or perspective that enlightens us and allows us to lead better lives, or else understand something about the ‘real’ a little better, be it an empathic understanding of a worldview or a collection of facts that helps us achieve personal goals.

Meanwhile, we live in an age where veracity is constantly questioned and stunned into order; everything must coalesce toward absolute truthiness, black and white, opposite poles—in fact, we demand it. It's most evident in politics and the tribalism of our social media, but it seeps into our everyday understanding of life and how we live it, not least in the arts and culture. People now abhor the ephemeral, the gray, the ambiguous endings, the new intellectual properties uprooting the things they know and love; they want tried and true.

We love ourselves because there is no one more real to you than you. We love people, the more real and more honest, the better; portals and windows opened into our everyday lives at every moment, sometimes while we sleep. We want to know each other intimately. The New Sincerity has become the Newest, Most Absolute Sincerity.

Therefore, when we read something in the context of these times, we feel it is best to know that whoever wrote that something is credentialed, verified, spoken for, and bona fide. That they are real. This is the best way to guarantee that our reading has not been in vain, that it has been additive.

It's okay if a non-fiction book about the digital age's effects on attention spans has an unknown author attached to it; you pick it up because you want to know about the digital age's effects on attention spans. You'll learn to worry about the author afterward. It’s no wonder why people hate unknown quantities in fiction.

Fiction. A word which is sometimes synonymous with lies and inherent untruthiness. In other words, perhaps reviled in the aforementioned world order. But if we can all agree that most times, this culture of ours seems fraught with tension and that at any moment, our obsession with the absolute polarities of realness will tear us all apart and, perhaps, even end the world as we know it, then I would like to posit fiction as an antidote.

And if the lies of fiction are to be an antidote, what better way to imbibe it than via a persona that is a fiction unto itself?

We care more about who's writing something than the writing itself. We count on who is writing the fiction to inform us as to how "true" its content may be. Instead of ruminating on how the novel makes us feel, we wonder: Was this inspired by their real life? Who was such and such character in real life? How historically accurate was the story? Is it really like that to be alive in such a place? What do they look like? How do they dress? We turn to our phones, Google who they were, or how the art was made even as we read or experience this art in real-time. The ‘meta’ – in this case, content surrounding the art – is needed as much as the art itself.

The ‘Clancy Steadwell’ moniker is my attempt to shun these needs.

People say they want art, but what I have found they really want is content—as long as that content is you or what you have to say. That is, we crave the mimetic.

I believe that only by eschewing my neurotic ego can I create true art for a reader to consume. This is not necessary for every writer, but it is for me. You don’t have to do this to be a good writer. Many authors do a fantastic job without. Whether that means I have a modicum of talent or an ocean of it doesn’t matter to me; this is simply how my work renders itself.

In the end, Clancy Steadwell is a character. He is me, but he is also not me. I am both his creator and his muse. He may not always give you (or I) what we want, but what I think we need.

If you ever are curious to know who Clancy Steadwell truly is, I am proud to simply point you toward my stories. It's my hope that, from them, you may get a picture of the life this author inhabits, learn a little more about your own in the process, and the fictions within yourself and us all.

Eventually, my identity will be revealed by some zealous fan or hater if anyone ever deigns to care so much. That is the way of the Internet and the way of things now. People will speculate, but I will do my best never to confirm.

It is, of course, convenient for me to espouse these ideas as someone who could, in reality, be virtually unknown anyway and so, pseudonym or not, starting from zero anyway.

Most likely, I am someone who is simply not interesting. Or, you know, I’m someone famous who’s just trying out an idea. Your guess is as good as mine.

So then: If Porn Name Pseudonym is primarily fiction written by an anonymous author with a ridiculous pen name, what is the benefit of reading PNP? As per Substack’s About prompt, how should I define the benefits of my Substack if it is primarily fiction?

How is fiction an antidote to our times, as I so bombastically proclaimed it?

It’s reductive to say its purpose is to entertain.

Fiction nourishes the chasm that opens within us when we worry about the truthiness of it all, plants a tree in the wasteland that has become neglected in our quest for absolutes. A tree is not just a tree in fiction, nor is it in the preceding sentence. A fly buzzing is not a fly buzzing, especially when someone says they died. Unlike so much of what our lives demand now, in fiction, the thing is not the thing. It helps us train our minds to see in greyscale when we have been blinded by either stunning brightness or engulfing dark. It’s hard work, it’s heavy lifting, but it’s for muscles that I believe have atrophied in modern times.

I understand most people don't want fiction fed to them from the sterile blue-light of a phone. Fiction generally needs something tactile to carry along the benefits I’ve described, for your mood to help you take away whatever it is the novel does for you, how you perceive it. The phone opens a portal to the other side of the world, whereas a book opens a portal within us.

That said, there is, therefore, no guarantee as to what my fiction might offer. I present a tree, and while another might see the tree for what it means to them, you may only still see it as a tree, and I will have failed.

There may be no benefit for you; it may not open a portal. I cannot promise to give you knowledge. I cannot promise that you find whatever truth you seek in my work. I don't want to promise too much at all.

If it’s fiction then ultimately, I cannot. (It’s all free, by the way).

This is why I always adorn my works with simple subtitles proclaiming the binary mode of fiction, so as not to confuse readers on their nature, even if written in the first person (short story, usually). I need the reader to know right away what they are getting into, that it is a web of lies woven so carefully and over a kernel of truth so small that they may hardly know the difference between the two.

When I publish something, what I can promise is that, if you are willing to step inside the barricades of our little black rectangles, I will give you something for five to eight minutes. At the break room, the bus stop, the grocery line, waiting at the doctor, between sets at the gym.

I will be there when you wake up in the morning and your partner is still sleeping, and the kids are sleeping, and you think, 'oh my god, I have a second, but I can't crack open a physical book right now because I am forty, and my eyes aren't what they used to be, and I can't see without turning on the light.'

And in the writing, you will find something, something to laugh at, something to feel sad about, and something to relate to. I will give you something, and—even if you are not sure what that something is—I hope you take it. What you do with it is up to you.

All I can do is ask you to set aside the need for mimetic veracity in storytelling.

I realize that most of what I say here is out of step with the zeitgeist. But when the zeitgeist seems to be carrying so many of us on a wayward journey towards depression, anxiety, and helplessness, all I can do is try something different. I also understand that in order for marginal ideas to migrate to the mainstream, concessions to mainstream thinking must be made.

The ‘meta’ must be realized.

I would like to use this post to announce a concession from Porn Name Pseudonym: a new kind of post that I will call retros. These will be retrospective think pieces in which Clancy Steadwell revisits his previously published Substack stories and, sometimes line by line, breaks them down, cites his process, inspirations, influences, choices, and – sometimes – brutally criticizes himself.

I came to Substack hoping to find readers for my writing. I was disappointed at first to find a very incestuous and cannibalistic place in which almost everyone was a writer.

But after trawling this place for over a year now, I’ve realized, what better place to seek readers than those who like reading so much that they are willing to write? The Venn diagram between writers and readers is often a circle anyway.

Besides, I’ve found a tribe! People who like to write and discuss the craft behind it! Who would have thought.

I hope PNP’ers enjoy these meta retros pieces—thank you, everyone, who has taken the leap with me and signed up. Two hundred strong is beyond my wildest dreams for this Substack. I am truly humbled.

thanks for reading this essay about someone with a ridiculous pen name. even if you didn’t like it, maybe click the little heart button so that people who might will find it.

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BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS:

What do you think about the fiction-non-fiction dichotomy and why non-fiction is more popular?

Do you think reading is transactional?

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