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
