J.S. Wright isn’t my real name.
It’s a pseudonym. A pen name.
Writers adopt pen names so often, a common question we’re asked in an interview is, “What’s your real name?” Whether or not you want to take off the glasses and show the world that Clark Kent is Superman can be a tough decision, but it is ultimately up to you, depending on it’s purpose.
Some adopt a certain last name for the letter it begins with. This is so their work will be near a more popular spot in the bookstore - P, S, R, & E are popular choices. Others are very private and prefer the anonymity it provides. Me? I was tired of strangers mispronouncing my name.
What happened after J.S. Wright was born helped me realize the most common purpose for a pen name: a persona. Theres a saying, “If you want a man to tell the truth, give him a mask” and it definitely holds water. Writing under a different name changes how you express yourself, you no longer have any filters that were put in place to keep yourself safe from too much scrutinisation.
I soon became comfortable with letting my inspirations roam into areas and ideas I never knew were stored up within me. Why should I care? It wasn’t me, “It was him, your honor. Mr. Wright is the one who did it, persecute him.”
Sure, some take the persona too far and ruin it for many others. Sadly, writers as a whole are like any other group of people - there’s a few assholes. They become this self-indulgent faux-creative attempting to be enigmatic but fail miserably, because assholes tend to be pretty dimwitted.
If you use a pen name… just use it, don’t become it. Realize that it is a tool, not a paradigm.
