Pen Names!
When I was about eleven or twelve years old, I was walking down Benford Street in Memphis, not too far from our family duplex where we lived. The name Deria came to mind and I vowed to one day give that name to my daughter. To me, Deria represented a true term of endearment.
I did not have children, so around the age of 27, I decided to use it as a pen name, just for fun. Pen names always intrigued me as I thought of other writers who had used them. Mary Ann Evans used the name George Eliot when she penned the classic Silas Marner along with other works. Though women were being published in Britain in the 1860’s, she did not want to viewed as a typical women’s writer and she wanted to be taken seriously. Hence, she wrote while using a man’s name and it worked!
And then, here in the States, Louisa May Alcott used the pen name A.M. Barnard before making it big using her own name when she wrote Little Women, Little Men and many other titles. Of course, we all know Mark Twain’s works such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but his real name was Samuel Clemens.
That being said, I tried on my new pseudonym or nom de plume and gave it a little extra pizzazz by adding the French version of my middle name. My high school French teacher said that she could not make Lynn sound French, so asked me my middle name. I told her that it was Margarita so during the four years while taking French, Ms. Nessman addressed me as Margarite’. Hence, my pen name in the late 70’s while writing for a local newspaper was sometimes Deria Margarite’. It depended on my mood as I decided which name I would use that day.
A few years back, after the advent of Google and other search engines, I decided to key in Deria Margarite.’ I did not expect to get any hits but to my astonishment, I did get a hit. With my mouth open in disbelief, I researched further and saw that an author had referenced one of my articles in his book. Julius E. Thompson wrote a book called Black Life in Mississippi: Essays on Political, Social and Cultural Studies in a Deep South State and he had read and used an excerpt from my article called “A Look at JSU’s Literary Festival,” Jackson Advocate (October 1, 1977). I don’t have copies of those pieces anymore, so this meant so much to see that someone had been paying attention.
It reminded me that nothing is done in vain and we never, ever know who is watching and observing what we are doing. Sowing good seeds do yield fruitful crops. As some singers and high -level celebrities have stage names and exude alter egos, writers too can stretch their limitations as they safely work behind other names or smokescreens, just for fun!
Lynn M.
October 21, 2023
