Ravenous Beauty: A Writer's Workshop

If you were to be published, or have been published, would you use a pseudonym? What would it be? Why or why not use one? What makes a good pseudonym?

Discuss!

I'd use a pseudonym only if I were writing something stylistically different than previous, profit-making books. Of course, this implies a publishing history, which I don't have, so I won't need to look into one soon.

I've heard from people that do use them that the author has got to be SURE he likes the name. To a large group of people, you will be identified by that name. You will become that name. Be careful.

Keeping this in mind, I'd probably go with Carl Fuzzy-Nutbutter.

I'm going to go with Miley Cyrus.

When I come to my senses--as in, when the lawsuit rolls in--I'll realize that maybe I should just stick with my given name.

It's the other way around for me. I've been anonymous online for so many years now, there's a body of work built up that it's time I take credit for now that the dreaded self-promotion mode has kicked in, since no one outside my profession knows who the hell I am anyway.

Still, yeah, if I were James Effing Patterson and wanted to go slumming into kid-lit or something, I think I'd go by Chester Pettifore.

Pettifore eh? I guess at least it's not Pederast.

If I use my real name to publish, it'd need my middle name to make it sound better. If I didn't, I'm not sure what pseudonym I would ever use.

rainbowsheeps wrote:Pettifore eh? I guess at least it's not Pederast.

Hence the funny. I've often joked that a pettifore (finger sandwich) sounds like something a child molester uses to lure kids into his car or something. The same guy who skipped breakfast because he was gonna "grab a little something on the way to work." Okay, okay, enough. . .

Or maybe Obama Len Baden.