Pen name?

Here, in my blog and comments to other ones, and in places like Ravelry (knitting site) I use a pseudonym - the same one, so I'm easy to identify. For submitting poems I use my real name.

In general the writers I know who use pen names do so for one of two reasons - no, three: the original name is difficult for most people to pronounce (in which case people often use part of the name or a middle name); they have a day job and want to keep the writing separate; sales are down and the editors want them to use a different name for a new series.

I don't know how much any of these really apply to poets. (Your name might be hard to pronounce, but unless you're selling entire books of your work or people are talking about you a *lot*, so what.)

My pen name is Stanelle Yoder...or R. Tate,..or Anne Street, or A. Friend. THEY get blamed for some of the drivel that comes out of my pen or computer!! Heh!!

I love this question. My dad was telling me about a writer that chose his pen name to be in the middle of most shelves - an M or N name I think. He'd thought hard about it and chose something that would almost always be at eye level, and had even researched what kind of names sell best (something like, two syllables in the first name, one syllable in the last, or something like that.)

So there's that to think about too!

MissMacchiato said:

I love this question. My dad was telling me about a writer that chose his pen name to be in the middle of most shelves - an M or N name I think. He'd thought hard about it and chose something that would almost always be at eye level, and had even researched what kind of names sell best (something like, two syllables in the first name, one syllable in the last, or something like that.)

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Carole Nelson Douglas told me that she considered using a pseudonym, until it was pointed out that by using her real name, she'd be in the Mystery section right next to Arthur Conan Doyle. Which was very useful when she started writing a series featuring Irene Adler, the opera singer who outwitted Holmes in "A Scandal in Bohemia."

My books would be near Margaret Truman, whose novels have the same naming convention "Murder at..." or "Murder in..." But she lived in New York and wrote books about Washington, DC, while I live in Atlanta and write books about New York.