Understanding pen names

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
      By any other name would smell as sweet; - Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

All pictures - courtesy - Wiki

What is a pen name?

Pen names, Nom de Plume, Literary doubles are pseudonyms adopted by authors. (courtesy - wiki)

Why are they used?

1.    To hide a gender/race.

·   Women have used masculine pen names in the earlier centuries. Mary Ann Evans wrote under the name George Eliot

·   Women who write about men/boys as their main characters. Joanne Rowling wrote with an initialized unisex pen name J. K. Rowling. Ian Fleming used a female pen name Vivienne Michel for his James Bond novel.

2.    To distance one-self from the notorieties associated with their actual names or to recover one’s reputation, if it has gone bad previously due to lower sales.

·   Science fiction author Harry Turtledove wrote as H.N. Turtletaub for his historical novels because he and his publisher felt that the presumed lower sales of those novels might hurt book sales of his science fiction novels that he writes under his own name.

3.    Say, your real name is really complex to appear on a book cover.

·   Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, Nobel Prize winner in Literature wrote as Gabriela Mistral.

4.     Authors who write in multiple genres use multiple pen names.

·   Lewis Carroll is the pseudonym of the English writer and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Carroll invented his pen name by translating his first two names into the Latin "Carolus Lodovicus" and then anglicizing it into "Lewis Carroll."

·    Nora Roberts used J. D. Robb, when she ventured writing detective fiction apart from romance novels.  

5.    Authors writing very sensitive articles, exposing crime/espionages that are bound to get explicit attention in all forms, use a pen-name.

·   Vladimir “Volodya” Ilyich Ulyanov, chose “Lenin” as a pen name for all his revolutionary communist literary works in his life.

·   Former SAS soldier, used the pseudonym Andy McNab for his book about a failed SAS mission titled Bravo Two Zero.

6.     Your name is same/similar to another popular figure out there already.

·   Oh, what a joy would It be to google your pen name and find that it fills up the entire first page of results? It is definitely needed if your name is John Smith or William Jones.

What are the advantages of using a pen name?

People often get very curious when you hide little things and certainly when you decide to hide your identity, you do stand a great chance of lingering on in their minds for a longer time.

You do ultimately tend to get exposed/discovered - when people do pick up occasional tid bits about you and garland it all together, all leading to a sudden outburst of popularity.

What are the disadvantages of using a pen name?

If your sole intention of writing under a pen name was to safeguard your identity, how will you ever publicize it or promote it among your network of friends and family?

With the social networking arena exploding by the day, you are judged by the number of friends/fans/followers you have. If you are a newbie writer, then publishers will definitely look out for your popularity before accepting to publish. And, by using a pseudonym, you will be masking all that you have built so far.

Final note –

Ultimately, getting noticed, more for your works rather than for who you are or where you are from, is a thrill that every author craves for, no matter whether re he chooses to use his real name or a pseudonym.

Pen name or no pen name, All the best with your writing J

LEARNING. I wanted to create a collage of the famous authors having pen names. And, yet again, I was pulled off my track - to learn working with an image editing tool. I chose GIMP. Notice how novice my collage is. I really did not have the patience to read through and explore all options before I come up with a great collage. But, yes – nothing better than a youtube video a day to improve my skills. So, for now, please bear with my current image. I promise, you will see me learning through this J