Helen Fielding Admits She's Considered Pulling a J.K. Rowling

Posted on June 2, 2014

Bridget Jones Diary author Helen Fielding wants to write under a pseudonym. The Telegraph reports that Fielding was asked at the Hay Literary Festival if she would like to have a "fresh start" by writing a novel under a fake name.

Fielding replied, "I've absolutely thought about that, yes. I think it would be great to just write a book and put it out there. But it might get spotted because I think I've got quite a distinctive style." She said that she did write a literary novel once, but said it didn't turn out very well and she had trouble writing in a different, serious style. She explained that she always longed to be a serious literary novelist and that she did once write a serious novel: "I actually did once write a book that was really quite serious. But then when I read it back it was awful, it had all these portentous sentences. Things like, 'Elsie and Albert were young. They did not understand the capacity of life to turn on a sixpence...'"

So how many other authors are out there pondering a new pseudonym, much to the horror of their agents? They always get outed, anyways.