I've decided to use a pen name. If any of you have ever tried coming up with an idea for a new name, you'll know just how difficult it is.
The name I've used since I picked up writing again (I wrote stories the old fashioned way on a typewriter back in the day when computers were very expensive and pretty rare, and then I had a family and no time for writing) a couple of years back was a hasty decision. I was setting up an account at livejournal and in order to do so I needed a username. The name I originally wanted was not available. I panicked and and rushed it. I needed that name and I needed it immediately.
The result was sorgbarn, deliberately spelled with a first lower case letter, even though it is a personal name. In fact it is a fictional character's name from a 19th century novel by a Swedish author. The name means child of sorrow. In hindsight I can see how I made several mistakes choosing that particualr name.
The first mistake is that it is too long to be easily remembered. The second is that it is not internationally useful. Unless you're Scandinavian it is difficult to pronounce, hence even more difficult to remember. For the third, it's meaning is depressing, and who wants a depressed romance writer.
This time I wanted to do better. Then why not use my given real life name? Well, again for several reasons. I could easily have used my first name, which is easy to pronounce and easy to remember, and it's common enough for me to blend in and stay unrecognized by those I don't want to come out to as a romance hobby writer.
Also I wish to keep my professional life apart from my writing life. I want to be able to know that not everybody at work or in the neighborhood knows that I write romance with explicit sex scenes in them.It makes it a lot easier to let loose when writing those exact scenes. I'm not ashamed, I just like to be private.
The surname is a different story. It is very Scandinavian, difficult to say for anyone not from here, which again is making it unnecessarily difficult to remember.
I wanted a new name. A name suitable for a romance writer - not that I think I will ever officially publish anything. I still wanted a name easy to read, easy to say out loud and easy to remember. I wanted it to be catchy. Like a real romance writer, just in case I should ever get as good as the real kind of authors.
I have my reasons for the name I chosen. Best of all, I like it. I hope I will continue to like it, because I'm tired of thinking up new names. It's difficult enough to make them up for fictional characters, for real life use it is even harder.
