Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding

considering writing under a pseudonym

Anita Singh | The Telegraph - June 1, 2014

The author is thinking about following in the footsteps of J K Rowling and writing a new genre under a pseudonym.

© Jay Williams 2014

As the creator of Bridget Jones, Helen Fielding knows her name is the ticket to the top of the best-seller lists.

Yet the author has disclosed that she would love to follow in the footsteps of JK Rowling and tackle a new genre under a pseudonym.

Asked at the Hay Festival if she would like to copy Rowling and have a “fresh start” by writing under another 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.”

Fielding said she had already attempted to diverge from the comic diary style of Bridget Jones by writing a work of literary fiction, only to find she wasn’t very good at it.

“I always aspired to be a literary novelist and 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...’”

If Fielding does decide to sneak out a novel under a pen name, she will hope it goes more smoothly than Rowling’s experience.

The Harry Potter author was revealed last year to be the crime novelist Robert Galbraith, author of The Cuckoo’s Calling.

A lawyer let slip the secret to his wife and the news was soon made public. Rowling was so angry that she took the matter to court.

Fielding brought out her third Bridget Jones book, Mad About The Boy, last year, and conceded during her Hay talk that she and ditzy Bridget have more in common than she has previously admitted.

“When the books first came out I really denied that she had anything to do with me,” she said. “But I think things do happen to me. Only the other day my literary agent got a call from a PC Moss saying, was I the owner of a silver Peugeot 308? And it turned out I’d driven away from a petrol station without paying for petrol and there was some sort of criminal charge thing going on. So I’m always denying this but maybe there are some qualities that we share.”