There is... another

In the words of Laurence J. Peter:

"I have to spend so much time explaining to Americans that I am not English and to Englishmen that I am not American that I have little time left to be Canadian."

Just in case you follow the progress of a lot of emerging Canadian playwrights, I have some confusing news. It sure confused me when I first found out.

I'm not the only Linda Carson writing plays in Canada.

I've been congratulated several times now on a prize I didn't win, for a play I didn't write (Dying To Be Thin), about bulimia (which I do not have). I conclude, therefore, that there is another Linda Carson, Canadian playwright.

TOLC--The other Linda Carson--seems to be working on the west coast of Canada, and she gets first dibs on the name, I guess, since she made it onto CBC first (with a recent hit play called Mom's The Word). If you know her, ask her to drop me a line or call so we can exchange addresses. It would be nice to be able to refer queries to her, and to hope that someday soon she'll be flooded with queries about my work.)

Meanwhile, I'm trying to change my playwriting name. Seems easy enough. Wanted to be sure I got something unique, but I didn't want to do anything cutesy. Wanted something I could identify with. Hey. My userid. Had the same one since 1977. What could be more natural?

Well, I was living in a fool's paradise, I'll tell you. The real world doesn't really "get" userids yet. The theatre world has absolutely no idea. And I have an unfortunate name (again) for this trick, so while I'm trying to become "lccarson"--all lower case, probably pronounced el-see-kar-sun--what people are reading is "iccarson"--probably pronounced as if I lived in Sweden. A mailing-list friend misread it as "icarus" for many months (I'm enchanted), and I was recently described in print as "ic" for short. (In fairness, I think they did that one on purpose.)

I think I'll stick with it. I can't wait to see what I'm called next.