Pen Names

Have you looked much within the erotica genre? It is littered with pen names and supposed pen names. While that isn't bad, it might say something about our culture.

What I wonder, with the unmasking of pen names on such a frequent basis, is why we choose them. J. K. Rowling thought she was safe with a pen name - and she was for a few months. One leak into the right journalist's ear, and suddenly there is a hunt for proof through experts to check on the phrasing used in each of the books she's written lately - the last Harry Potter book, Casual Vacancy, and Cuckoo's Calling.

Seems like a lot of effort. Right, it's J. K. Rowling, one of the most well-known and wealthy authors in the world. So she's worth it, when maybe a small nobody who publishes a few erotica stories.

But if you make it big, like E. L. James, someone else will want to see right through you.

Does that make some authors strive for the midlist? Does it make some authors pause before trying to send work out? Does it make someone happy to rip off the mask? Happier than the authors who had their bliss removed?

Life as a writer isn't easy. We pursue the stories we have to tell. It is not something happy people do. Happy people go play with their kids and their spouses and go to parties and have fun. Writers stick themselves alone in dark corners and scribble into notebooks. [Those who have entered the digital age might be typing into a computer, phone, or other device.]

Life as a writer with a pen name doesn't get better. Can you imagine trying to tell the people closest to you that you write, you have a pen name, and you don't want everyone to know? Why wouldn't you want everyone to know? It might not be a good move in your career. It might not be something you're willing to share because it's too personal. It might be a reason that most people cannot understand or aren't willing to sit through an explanation.

Some writers have many names. They use them for branding and to direct readers to one set of novels or another. Sometimes they list their different versions of a name - whether they were found out from a secret or if the pen name wasn't a secret at all - on their bio pages. Some writers use pen names to get away from connotations with other real people, other real writers. Imagine if your name were King or Rowling or Roberts - and you wrote in a different genre from the famous writer? Some people will find enough of a reason there to change into a different version of their names.

Some, but not all. Next time you pick up a book and read through the author's page, are you going to wonder if that was the name the writer was born with? And, really, does it matter?