What's in a name?

I read a discussion on Deb Ng's blog, Freelance Writing Jobs, yesterday morning about pen names and whether or not writers should use them and under what circumstances. Personally, I do not use a pen name for 97% of the writing that I do on the Internet. I do, however, use a couple of different pen names for about 1.5% and the remaining 1.5% of the time, I ghostwrite.

Why have I used a pen name? To be perfectly honest, I've only used pen names on those bits of writing that I don't want to be tied to, professionally, because of the content. Take out of that what you will. ;) I feel that pen names are wonderful little tools that certainly have their place in the literary world. Whether you're like me and you want to disassociate your professional identity from other writing or you just simply like the sound of a pen name better than your own, pen names definitely have their perks. They allow a writer to remain anonymous, in some situations while, in others, they allow him or her to create a whole new persona.

Did you know? Lots of famous authors have written under a pen name at one time or another. Here are a few examples (real names on the left, pen names on the right) :

Stephen King -----> Richard Bachman, John Swithen

Esther Friedman -----> Ann Landers

Dean Koontz -----> David Axton, Leonard Chris, Brian Coffey, Deanna Dwyer, K.R. Dwyer, Leigh Nichols, Arthur North, Richard Paige, Owen West

Nora Roberts -----> J.D. Robb

Samuel Clemmens -----> Mark Twain

Agatha Christie -----> Mary Westmacott

If you are in the market for a pen name, but are having trouble coming up with one (or even if you're having trouble coming up with character names), you may want to try this nifty little resource: the Random Name Generator.

According to the Random Name Generator, my pen name should be . . . *drumroll* . . . Sherise Glascott. Nice, but I think I'll stick to the one I have. ;)