By Any Other Name (essay)
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| Title: | By Any Other Name |
| Creator: | Doranna Durgin |
| Date(s): | June 1992 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | multifandom |
| Topic: | |
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By Any Other Name is a 1992 essay by Doranna Durgin.
It was published in A Writers' Exchange #3.
The topic is pseuds.
The Essay
Pen names.
Sooner or later, most of us consider using one. Maybe we don't think a particular work is up to our personal standards, but for one reason or another, are willing to have it published. Or maybe something is simply too close, too personal, and we want some distance from it.
After years and years of eschewing poetry, I recently plunged into the genre-free verse, of course; anything else is far too intimidating! However, I was far too timid about it - and perhaps felt the results revealed a little too much of my inner self-to use my name when the poems were published. I don't think anyone has to ponder too much about when to use a pen name, though; it seems to be one of those instinctive things.
But what name? Given the chance to create a name from the almost infinite possibilities, how do you make the decision? The name you wish your parents had chosen for you? Names borrowed from personal heroes? Close your eyes and point randomly at the phone book? Hmmm....
Group pen names are the most fun, I think, and you don't have to make them up by yourself. Sometimes a conglomeration of the authors' actual names, and sometimes a collaboration, the decision is less weighty when it rests on several shoulders. Kay Bull and Anne Tenna are two names that have cropped up in the multi-media zine RERUN - what fun! Wish I'd thought of those!
Single author names can be mined from several sources. Middle names, same-initial names, maiden names, ancestral names, smart-ass names...for one Star Trek story I wrote many years ago (and with a circulation small enough that I can safely reveal this name and no one will ever discover the drivel I perpetrated in print) I used the name M.S. Hicke. At the time I was hidden away in some very rural mountains and feeling a little...unworldly; thus the Hicke. And even though the story wasn't a Marysue, I didn't take it very seriously, so M.S. stands for the lieutenant herself. The name was a joke that only I and my editor were in on, but that was okay-and it certainly made me feel better about having the story printed. For my poems I used the name of one of my favorite original characters, combined with the name of a favorite character from someone else's book. Maybe some day someone will figure out who really wrote the poems, but by then, maybe I'll have become comfortable with acknowledging them, too.
Pen names let us hide from work we're not certain we want to claim - not necessarily because it's not good enough, but just because people begin to expect certain things of oft-published authors, and you might not feel a particular story will fulfill those specifications. And while use of your real name is a statement that you stand behind your work - willing to accept both plaudits and criticisms - pen names are not always shields. Sometimes they give us the freedom to dare new directions of creativity.