You/Your Pseudonym

Two weeks ago, when I took part in a blog hop that threw me off my regular schedule (sorry about that!) I teased you with a name: Elena Ferrante.

If you read through to the bottom and found that little teaser, I hope you looked her up. She’s a fascinating story – and I say story deliberately, not person. Because Elena Ferrante isn’t a person, it’s a pseudonym for the writer of some best-selling, widely acclaimed books (which, I admit, I have not read).

But the story of her name and anonymity is just as popular and talked about—possibly even more so—than her actual books.

The fact that Ferrante used a pseudonym is not unusual. A lot of authors do so—especially romance and erotica writers who don’t want to jeopardize their outside jobs, children’s lives or social standing within their private-life communities. By publishing under a nom de plume all that is private remains private. No jobs or social standing will be jeopardized.

But to be so protective of her identity that she won’t even appear in public or social media (even under her pseudonym for fear of her true identity being discovered) Farrante is in the extreme. Because of this, she’s almost asking people to try to discover her real identity. One professor and trained analyzer of text (philologist) even went so far as to try to analyze her books to try to discover who she truly is. He came up with an answer, but both Farrante and the person he said was truly her have denied that they are one and the same.

I’m not even going to delve into why she has done this—she answers the question herself in this excellent interview done, by email, with The Guardian Newspaper. Instead, lets look at it from the perspective of a modern genre writer, such as we (I’m including you, reader, I hope you don’t mind) are.

I know some writers are very protective of their identities, posting fake pictures on social media (or pictures of things other than themselves). But the point is, they are on social media. They have an on-line presence. Why? Because it’s necessary to be a genre writer today. We need to engage with our readers, it’s how we build our readership. It’s how our books are discovered. And this applies to both self-published writers and those who are traditionally published. Everyone needs to be on social media to sell their books and have a dedicated audience.

The story of Eloisa James comes to mind when thinking about Farrante’s story. In case you don’t know, she is a New York Times best-selling writer of Regency and historical romance who did manage to keep her identity absolutely secret for many years while she worked as a professor at a New York university. One way she managed to continue to write and sell her romances was because the audience who read her books were not her university colleagues. She was also doing this before social media became quite so essential to a writer’s career. She went public with her true identity in 2005.

Could she have remained so anonymous today?

I think not. It’s essential to a writer to be a person and not just a name. The fact that the world is so fascinated with Farrente’s identity speaks to this. We want to know the author of our books. We want to see who they are and where they come from and how they got their ideas for the stories they write.

So, is it possible to remain anonymous and be a genre writer? Yes. Many people do it. But it’s not easy and it severely limits what you can do—you can’t sell your books yourself and you can’t talk in public anywhere where someone might recognize you, among other limitations.

Personally, I write under a pseudonym both because my children were small when I began writing and also because my real name is very ethnic-sounding and when I began publishing Regency writers had British-sounding names. I’ve come to love my alter-ego and love being her. I wouldn’t switch to writing under my real name unless really forced to. Even the classes I teach and the non-fiction books I write I publish under my pseudonym. I like it that way not because I’m trying to hide who I am (if you search for me, you’ll find my real name very easily), but because that’s writer me, Meredith Bond, not private life me.

So, what about you? Do you write under a pseudonym? How hard do you work to keep your real identity hidden?