Using A Pen-Name (Of Pen Names and Roses)

INTRODUCTION

Ordinarily, I try to add some "redeeming value" to whatever I write, whether that's by trying to offer useful information (once in awhile) or, in the case of some personal-experience type material, by at least trying to "make people aware" of one issue or another. Some things I write actually do have a little redeeming value, I think. Other things? Not so much (often depending on how self-indulgent I was feeling at the time I wrote). This Hub may be one of those "not-so-much" things.

I don't think of myself as a "creative type" at all (because, honestly, I have zero creativity); but I think I'm going through some kind of "creative phase" (have been for a long time). I've been writing and writing for quite awhile now, and I'm starting to realize there's something I need to write that, for all the writing I've done, I've kept missing it.

Something else I realize is that everybody has his problems in this world, and it's pretty self-indulgent to just go on and on about whatever it is I've been stewing over (or needing to stew over) for the last however long. It's also pretty self-indulgent (at best) to stew over something like writing in a world where so many people have such larger problems.

Still, writing is what it is; and I am what I am; and sometimes a person just needs to write whatever it is he feels the need to write.

Spare-Time Writing, Pseudonyms, and Stuff Like That

When I first started to do what I planned to be "just hobby writing" online, the first writing site recommended people use a "real-sounding" pen name. So I did that. I meant I could write whatever I wanted to write without embarrassing my grown kids (mainly). (What I "wanted to write" was some personal-experience type stuff a good part of the time.)

As I got more and more into "hobby writing" I just kept using some variation of that name. Sometimes, if I wanted to show one kind of writing or another to someone hiring me, I'd just say, "I also write under the pen name, ____________." My friends and family know what it is (so I'm not hiding anything - just not embarrassing anyone on the Internet). Sometimes, as a way of remaining "the same, one, person" online I'd use a derivative of the name if that were more in keeping with the kind of names on one site or another. It was, I thought, "bad enough" that I wasn't using my real name. At least I shouldn't stray too far from that one pen name I'd once been so uncomfortable using. One site addressed the matter of pen names by reminding people that Mark Twain used a pen name. There was that part of me that thought, "Well, I'm hardly Mark Twain, and Internet writing isn't exactly writing of the level of American classics," but it did, at least, make me feel less dishonest to keep in mind that writing is done under pseudonyms all the time.

I got into the "hobby writing" deeper and deeper, and my hobby was becoming a part-time income. On things like tax forms and bank accounts, my pen name is a "dba" type of thing. So now, in a lot of ways the name is as natural to me as my real name. At this point, most writing sites don't let users change their names; but I'm not sure I'd be comfortable using my real name online (mostly because I'm someone who cringes at the thought of any public exposure, even if the exposure was about something positive). Besides, even if I were to overcome my discomfort at having people be able to search my real name and find all kinds of writing (even it it shared little but my age range, number and sexes of children with anyone scouring for the purposes of mailing lists), it wouldn't be easy, now, to switch all my writing to my own name. As it is, I've established a certain amount of "online presence" under some variation of the same name. Changing names, moving material around, and whatever else it would take to switch names would most likely cost me quite earnings-wise. (I may have come for the hobby writing, but I stayed for the earnings.)

And so, as time and words have passed, I'm continued to expand my "online identity", creating the situation of having more and more to lose if I change it now, and getting myself farther and farther "out and away" from that one, simple, truth about myself - my real name.

Even writing under a pen name, I've always been careful about what I share or how I present things, because even before I shared my pseudonym with family and friends, I've always known there is no way to take back what we write online. Besides having a wish to write honestly, I've also always had the idea that one day (maybe stored on some new kind of disk or whatever the files of of the future will be stored on), my future great-grandchildren may get to see what I wrote about life in my time (whether that's about the big issues or the small stuff), and get an up-close-and-personal view of their roots and of how history relates to them. I've always thought it didn't matter much what name I write under. What's important (at least for my purposes, whether professional, "semi-professional", or personal), I've always thought, is that I know I aim for accuracy and truth that will stand the test of "confirmabililty" in one way or another, or for one reason or another.

Hobby writing or not, whatever I write anywhere will always be my words. Right, wrong, good, or bad, the thousands and thousands of words I've strung together are words I've written, not to be able to take them back one day, but to be able to make sure they're never lost; because, regardless of how mundane, important, silly, or serious a subject is; one of the many reasons writers write is to share the words they've put together in a way they believe is worth sharing.

Some people write online just for fun. That's fine. I've done that at times. Others write just for business. That's fine too. I've done a lot of that as well. For others, though, writing isn't just an activity or a job, it's as much of a part of who they are as their eye color or the fact that they can shovel a driveway full of snow with grace and speed (or else can't). I'm one of those "others".

On the one hand, I take writing as much for granted as I take the fact that my eyes are blue/gray On the other hand, there's a part of me that's kind of proud to know I can shovel a driveway with both grace and speed; I know I write with speed and occasionally like to think I've done it with grace. The thing is, though, that just as my eye-color isn't going to earn me a living; and just as the humble driveway-shovelling skill isn't going to show up in my epitaph, the writing thing is just one other part of me that what I want in my epitaph either. I used to think that the writing thing was something that was part of who I am. Now, after years of writing and three children, I've pretty much come to realize that the important things about how I am have nothing to do with writing. So, what once felt like a "calling" has come to feel no more like a "calling" than stuffing envelopes, bagging groceries, or - yes - shoveling snow.

And so, separated from what once was a sense of having a calling by the less-than-lofty matters of either entertaining myself or else earning a living; and having separated myself from the one of the most basic ways by which a person identifies himself (my real name), I feel as if the last few years have somehow swept me out to sea (at least a little),

The thing is, while I really enjoy putting together words (and even enjoy the clicking of my own typing, to which I often "play" imaginary songs in my head and type to the rhythm of whatever songs I come up with), the "calling" aspect of writing has never been about the mechanics of putting together words. Behind that has always been the idea of what the right piece of writing has the potential of doing in this world. Somehow, with the inevitable way that writing, calling, earning a living, and entertaining oneself can all be kind of intertwined and mixed up; I've put so much emphasis on the "mechanical" aspects of writing, that sense of calling that once screamed at me all through every day has become pushed so far into some background (with more immediate needs and demands building up and pushing it farther and farther back, to the point where it has almost become buried.) The thing about callings, though, is that no matter how far into the background they are pushed, somehow they are powerful enough to be heard, even through all the noise and clutter to which they've taken a back seat.

Through all the time I've been writing online (for myself), I've been thinking that the authenticity which I write is the "main thing", and that I've continued "to be me", even with a pen name. After all, "a rose by any other name...". I've been thinking that the "real-ness" of any of my writing is a matter of the "real me" being reflected in what I write. I've been thinking that would be enough for me. It isn't. Sure, I enjoy putting words together and hearing the clicking of the keyboard to imaginary music - but I'm now seeing that it isn't about the writing and never has been. It's about the "calling factor"; and while I need to keep that "calling" to myself for now (the way I once needed to keep my writing a "treasured secret" that was "just mine", at least until I realized the writing wasn't the thing to which I'm particularly attached), I'm realizing I can't feel very grounded during my days if I'm spending too much time on something that doesn't mean anything to me (at least not in any important way) under an "inter-changeable" name that has no connection to the "core me" and whatever version of a "calling" seems to be gnawing away at me when I'd thought I'd abandoned it years ago.

Why did I abandon that "calling" years ago? Because I've had other things on which to spend my writing time. See, while a lot of other people who write online spend their time creating false personnas, I've been driven by the wish to make good and sure "the world" sees who/what I am "as a person". Why this need? Well, until I had to get a divorce in my thirties, I had just lived my life taking for granted that the people close to me in my life knew what a solid, capable, well balanced, adult I was. The world is full of solid, capable, well balanced, adults. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the things I did or the things I'd accomplished (particularly when it came to the kind of children I had) were evidence of "all the wonderful things" I was or could do. I didn't worry about proving anything to anybody. I just minded my own business and "did my thing", never even thinking about what other people thought.

If I didn't think someone was interested in something I was interested in, I wouldn't talk about it. Instead, I'd talk about what they were interested in and keep my own interests to myself. Whether it was because I aware that some people don't think mothers have any "dreams" of their own, or whether it was because I knew that some people would have seen my personal aspirations as "silly", I kept those to myself too. To make an awfully, awfully, long story short, the point is that my divorce (and a whole lot of mistakes and ignorance made during the process) left me realizing that all the people I'd so taken for granted "just knew me" didn't. In fact, when I was handed a paper with all the "input" a lot of people offered as part of a whole investigation process, it was if the the whole thing were written about some stranger.

I realize there can be "the way we see ourselves" and "the way others see us", but this was absolutely absurd! This was a case of "the way I saw myself", "the way people who aren't asked, or people whose positive input wasn't included saw me", and "the way people who should have known me better but didn't saw me". It became shockingly clear that after 30-plus years of life and 12-plus years of marriage, the people closest to me didn't seem to see the one thing that was most important to me - what a solid, sensible, well adjusted person I've always been.

I was never someone who built my "identity" on my appearance. My appearance was OK enough, but I was someone who measured myself and others by what's on the inside. I'd never been someone who saw things like appearance, money, education, or anything else as the stuff of which identities are made. I had built my identity on how capable a person I've always been. I'd built it on how strong a person I've always been. I'd built it on how objective and fair a person I can be, even when others may not be able to be so reasonable. These were the things I'd always thought a person should be, so when I was able to be those things I felt confident and satisfied that I had.

Most of the people I was close to knew they could count on me (I thought), so that, to me, meant (if I'd ever even stopped to think about it at all) they saw how capable and solid I was. Well, it was, as I said, a shock to realize that the only people in my life who seemed to really know me were my own children. There was, though, the matter that I was their mother, which meant that there are some things child can never really see about their mother, even if what they DO see is accurate. Without further rehashing it all, the result was that I'd be shaken out of my previous sense of sureness that other people "just naturally saw the kind of person I am" and knocked into some weird kind of lack of confidence that was associated with the fact that nobody ever said to me, "Oop. We're sorry. We made a terrible mistake."

So, I was left pretty much with the feeling that (as I've often described it) I was like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, lifted up, house and all, and tossed into some strange land far away from home.

Before all this happened, I'd never, EVER, been anyone who wanted or needed anyone else for the purposes of "solidifying" my sense of self or my "core". My sense of independence and autonomy were things people often admired and often resented (often, the same people). In fact, even during the whole "multi-level misunderstanding" that made the divorce a disaster, I was solid as a rock in my sense of self. Still am. So, it didn't do anything whatsoever to shake my sense-of-self. What it did do, though, was make me aware that if we don't worry about what other people think, or don't make sure they know what we are and what we think, they'll fill in the blanks (and, particularly if they're emotionally involved, there's a good chance - human nature being what it is - they'll fill in those "blanks" with stuff that has nothing to do with reality). The worst part can be that when people are prone to filling in the blanks, if what they say is far from the truth it isn't necessarily that they're intending to lie. They can actually believe what they're saying.

In any case, it wasn't that the whole divorce disaster shook my sense-of-self. It was that I needed to know that, when it came to the basics of how I think or the kind of person I am, I needed to present those in order to make sure nobody else presented them incorrectly. Who did I think I needed to "present" who/what I was to? Nobody, in particular (although I did have it in mind that if lawsuits came out of the divorce someone may be paying attention to my claims about bad information fed to the court). So, long before I began writing online that was always there.

Everything I did, I did also with a little bit of an eye for how "perfectly normal" it looked (considering claims in the divorce that I wasn't). Whether it was arranging my kitchen cabinets or putting out holiday decorations, I did what I would have done anyway; but then I'd kind of try to imagine being a stranger who saw whatever it was, and consider whether it looked "perfectly normal" or not. I wasn't being someone or something I wasn't. I was just aware of what I saw as the "importance" of making sure I expressed who and what I was with every opportunity I had to do that.

Long before I had a clue about the false "accusations" that were building up around me, and without my knowledge, my mother (who did "have a clue") said to me, "Please promise me one thing. Don't stay by yourself. Get out and let other people see you." At the time (and not having that "clue"), I wondered what on Earth she was trying to get at. (I thought, "I don't know... what - does she think I ought to socialize more or something?") It was only later that I would learn why my mother said what she did. She knew I needed to be out and around with people in order to get myself plenty of witnesses. I didn't listen to her because I was busy having a marriage crisis and didn't have time to get out in the world to surround myself with "outsiders" who weren't emotionally involved.

Part of "landing in Oz" has been that I was separated from the life and circumstances that would have let me get the kind of job I could have gotten otherwise. Not only did the whole situation prevent me from being able to get the kind of job I could have gotten, but it prevented me from having the life I'd earned and would have had if things had been handled fairly and appropriately in the divorce. In any case, all I could do was dust off my old newspaper clips as samples, write a new resume, and look for someone who would hire me to write for them. It was work. It was writing work. It was money. It wasn't what I wanted to do with my life, and it wasn't enough money - but it was a start.

When I first began writing online as a hobby (besides writing for work), I was trying to brush up on "writing on demand". It had been awhile, and I thought it would be good practice. I'd look for some title or subject and see what I could come up with. Somewhere along the way, I decided I'd move on to writing whatever I felt like writing, just as an enjoyable way to spend some spare-time. It was when I moved from practicing "writing on demand" to writing to express myself that I began, as I had tended to do since the divorce mess, to think in terms of whether anyone who ever read what I wrote would see what a "perfectly normal" person I am. Again, I wasn't trying to create a false impression. I was trying to be good and sure I'd express myself enough to let the "real" me show in what I posted.

My spare-time writing was enjoyable for me. It had begun to earn me a part-time income. Even so, in the back of my mind was always the idea, "If/when a legal situation arises out of the earlier divorce mess, I'll just tell anyone who questions me, "There's what I've written online. Judge me by that." During the initial divorce "dealings" I had been sent a query to submit anything I'd written to the lawyers; so I had learned that people's writings do get brought into legal cases.

The kinds of things I wrote about were, in fact, things that interested me; so it wasn't like I chose subjects based on what anyone else would think. Way at the back of my mind when choosing one thing to write about or another, though, was always the thing that what I would write would be about "normal" things, "regular" things, nothing edgy or "weird". I don't have an ounce of creativity in me anyway; so besides not even being able to come up with anything "edgy" or "weird", it was just natural for me to "express" that "left-brained", organized, reasoned, person I've always been.

The GAL/social worker who interviewed us all for the divorce asked me, "Are you the lonely writer type?" "What???" I thought. My quick reply to her was, "I have these three children. How on Earth could I EVER be lonely?" I realized that having established myself (or having someone else established me) as a "writer type" meant that some people don't seem to realize that not all "writer types" are very creative (so even if there is some stereotype about "creative types" being "lonely", I wasn't among that group anyway). For goodness sake, I'd been doing newspaper writing and public relations writing!

In any case, as I wrote more and more in my spare time I stayed safely within the limits of non-fiction, non-creative, writing. I wrote practical material ("practical" doesn't make anyone look less than solid, after all). I wrote about loving my kids. (I figured, since I was pretty good at describing my own experience, anyone who saw what I'd written would know it was genuine and, of course, solid.) I wrote about "all things normal" and "all things regular" and nothing dramatic or at all exciting. I even told my fairly dramatic and epic divorce story in a way that made it all seem "regular" and not-at-all hyperbolic or creative (I think).

In blogs I started I'd add music or colors that showed my tastes (and embarrassingly "uncool" tastes, at that), but I wanted to express my reserved, quiet-ish, mature, personality. (I wanted to show the occasional signs of a sense-of-humor because a sense-of-humor is so "regular" and "normal".) Even as time has gone on and the idea that legal matters may re-surface from the divorce that never really had a clear-cut ending and about which (for some "secret" reason) I've never been able to get information from the attorney; I kept writing about things that would express who I am - no longer so much with any legal cases in mind, but out of a need to stay in touch with the "me" I am and have always been.

When I landed in my "Oz" it wasn't because a tornado picked up my house and me and dumped me in some foreign place. It was because strangers who were involved with court system failed to do their job. I don't know if there's a gag order, bad information, or what at the heart of the attorney's absolutely not responding to me. She's pretty much wildly disregarded attorney ethics outlined by the Bar Association, so I find it hard to believe she's so blatantly disregard lawyers' ethics without someone/something to protect her from malpractice suits and disbarment.

The thing is, clicking your heels three times doesn't work in real life.

In the meantime, I can't just click my heels three times and go home. My stuff and my kids' stuff ended up in three or four different storage places because of the divorce. It's apparently a "secret" as to whether my stuff remains where it was sent and stored. A lot of the kids' stuff was put in a family members' barn, where it was ruined by mice and whatever else gets into barns. My son salvaged his Baptism bib and gave it to me once. My daughter's dolls were there. My white lawn chairs were given to someone and painted an ugly, dark, green. I don't know what happened to my kids' baby furniture and clothes. The rocking chair my mother gave me when I had my daughter, everything my mother gave me since I was married, stuff from when I was a child, a picture from my grandfather's house, my father's accordion - I don't know where any of it is (or whether I'll get any of it back). From what I hear, a lot of the kids' stuff is still in a storage place; but that's from after the divorce. Still, what they were left with after their earlier childhood stuff was destroyed wasn't much. Even so, what's in storage somewhere is stuff that meant a lot to them too. All my dishes, wedding gifts, wedding pictures, baby pictures, high school yearbook, Barbie dolls, and whatever else was mine are somewhere (maybe). All I know is I don't have them with me, and I was never able to get answers from the lawyer (maybe that's just as well).

My mother's dead, and I believe it was the court's bringing her into the whole ridiculous disaster that contributed to her heart attack.

No - I can't just click my heels three times and go home. Maybe it looks like I have a new home and new world now, but I'm still stuck in Oz; and the longer it goes on, the farther away from "me" it seems I may be moving.

It doesn't feel like solid footing when you're both grounded and not grounded, all at the same time.

BUT... I am solid and strong, and I'm still mother to three young people who need their mother to be what mothers need to be. That means that in some ways, the "core" me is both grounded as solidly as ever and kind of floating in that basket of the hot air balloon, hoping to fly home (or at least hoping to fly somewhere where I can straight answers from the lawyers/people involved and maybe (maybe) be re-united with some of the pieces of what used to be "home" (and I'm not talking about the house we all lived in before the criminally mangled divorce).

There are things I can't post online which means there are things some people wouldn't understand about the situation and why I've been trapped living a life that isn't representative of who I am and that doesn't express "the real me". My present home (and I do own it) is in a nice enough neighborhood, but it's been a "temporary" situation that began in 1992 and continues through today. Again, there are facts I can't include that will make my situation seem, perhaps, more mysterious than it really is.

In any case, when I started writing online I selected a pen name that didn't mean anything to me at that time, but over time has grown in "importance" as it relates to the writing I've done in my spare time. At the same time, while I once wrote for no reason other than to practice "writing on demand", the writing I've done has increasingly been a way (the only real way, I guess) for me to stay in touch with me.

This whole thing I've written shouldn't be interpreted as all as bleak as I may have made it seem, because life has gone on in a lot of ways. As Dorothy explained when she tried to tell her family and friends about Oz, there are a lot of wonderful people and things about this strange land into which I've been tossed and essentially abandoned by the court system without answers as to why.

So, in the years since I had no choice but to abandon that "calling" I mentioned sometime back, I've needed to concentrate on staying in touch with me, in finding ways to express who/what I really am in a land where I've been separated from the usual means of expressing oneself. For the most part, I can live fairly well without really having a lot of opportunity to express myself; but I remember my words about making sure I got out where people could see me; and after what took place during the divorce mess, I suppose I've come to realize that expressing oneself is more important than I ever thought it was (and for reasons I never would have imagined).

One problem I've realized has started to arise, though, is that as my name has become more and more associated with my writing; and as my writing has more and more been a matter of expressing myself; some kind of gap seems to be widening. It's one thing to associate a meaningless name with meaningless writing. It's quite another to associate a meaningless name with enough writing that serves the purpose of keeping its creator in touch with who she is that the writing's "identity" starts to overtake the identity of the meaningless name.

Another problem has been that as I dug in my heels in order to keep in touch with the me I am and have always been, no matter what has gone on; I've been hanging onto what is most easily and readily within reach, mostly because at this point I'm too exhausted to reach much farther out than that.

What I think I'm starting to realize, though, is that while I've been imagining finding a way to "muster up the energy" to reach farther than I've been able to over recent years; enough of what I've collected by reaching for what is readily available has built up to obscure the fact that where I need to be reaching isn't "farther out" and "ahead", but instead is farther within and farther back - to where I can unearth that calling that I still hear (often only faintly), but that's been buried underneath a whole lot things and a whole lot of time.

I don't really know what all this "figuring out" means just yet. I see no immediate change that will include my not having some need to keep in touch with me or to express myself as some way of reassuring myself that if - ever again, and out-of-the-blue - I find myself being lied about and questioned, I can always point someone in the direction of my perfectly sensible writing and say, "See? That's who/what I am." Still, such a "surface-level" approach to keeping in touch with me doesn't cut it either. The thing is, the kind of writing I often do is only a tiny part of who/what I am. Nobody can ever feel really grounded by hanging onto such a small part of himself. After all, as I said earlier, there are the "mechanics" of writing, and there is the "calling factor". The mechanics of writing can be nifty (kind of like being able to shovel a big, long, driveway full of snow effortlessly and with speed and gracefulness). It is, however, the "calling factor" in writing (for those who have it) that has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with purpose in this life.

As for the pen name, I still don't really know how to sort that whole "gap problem" out. My perfectly sensible brain tells me it isn't the greatest idea to post my full, real, name with all the personal-experience material I've written over the last few years. Should the "calling factor" make its presence well enough known I imagine I'll answer the call under my real name.

Something I think about is this: A rose by any other name is, of course, still a rose. Then again, calling a rose something else isn't particularly accurate either.

Remember how I said I came for the hobby-writing and stayed for the earnings? Actually, I think I came for the hobby-writing and stayed for me.