Nicknames, Nom de Plumes, and Thee

How important is it to use your own name?

I remember when I first tried to join the worldwide writers’ platform at Quora in 2014, my joining was rejected because I wasn’t using my ‘real’ name. I had to jump through hoops to prove C.J. Heck was really the name I was known by.

I know they wanted me to throw out my initials and use my full name, but as an Author with five books, all with C.J. Heck on the cover, I was not going to muddy the water by signing up with anything different.

After weeks of arguing with them, I finally sent them copies of my book covers, copies of checks with all but my name as payee blacked out, even copies of envelopes showing mail addressed to C.J. Heck. They finally let me join.

After I had been writing at Quora for several years, they suddenly relaxed their requirement that new members had to use their actual given names. 

What they didn’t count on was the huge number of new members with names like Purple Bunny, He Done-it, Sir Laughs Alot, Joe King, Miami Sammy, Scooter, or BOOKer T.

My first thought was, these can’t be serious writers … can they?  Then I realized I was internalizing it, basing on my own circumstances, which were:

I worked hard at my writing.  When I started out, there was nothing I wanted more than to be published. I wanted my name on a book’s cover for the whole world to see.  In 1995, I decided I wanted to be an Author so bad I could taste it. I wouldn’t have wanted the credit to go to ANYone else.

I searched Google for: “When Should a Writer Use a Pen Name?”  I found there really are valid reasons why a writer might choose to use a pen name (a nom de plume):

Another author already “owns” your name. Your mother was a big fan of the Author, Sylvia Plath, so she named you Sylvia Plath after her.

Your name doesn’t fit the genre. Bruiser Ratchet or Belinda Blood may want to break into the romance genre, but those names would be all wrong.

Bruiser Ratchet would be a great name for a detective/suspense novel writer, and Ms. Blood’s name would suit the horror genre perfectly.

You want to conceal your real identity. You’re a prim and proper physics professor at a large university but you write XXX erotica.  You might choose to write under an assumed name, of course.

A pen name would also protect the Author from political persecution or prejudice. Imagine writing about homosexuality or atheism from a personal perspective in the 1950s without using a pen name to hide your real identity.

Your name may be too hard to pronounce and/or spell. If your name contains ten syllables, or has several Xs or Zs, perhaps a shorter, easier-to-spell name would be in order. And it would be good if it can be pronounced correctly by the average Joe.

If you were given a truly bad name when you were born. Consider Harry Johnson. Ima Hogg. Harold Bahls. Tanya Hyde, or Rachel McTwitt.

You might want to cross genres. Anne Rice, famous for her vampire series, used pen names for her collections of erotica, and she would probably take up a new pen name if she wanted to move into Sci-Fi or Westerns.

You’ve been published before, and sales were not good. In this case, your publisher may suggest using a pen name to help boost sales of your new book and break any past association with your poorly received book.

In the case of Steven King, he finished books faster than his publisher wanted them sold in bookstores.  So he also published books under the name of Richard Bachman.

* Remember: easy to say, easy to spell, easy to remember, but please don’t make it ridiculous.

 [Partially reprinted, with permission of Writer’s Relief, Author’s submission service.]

Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
Quora Top Writer 2018.
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