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Masks
Choosing a mask … sale of Oriental art during at Sotheby's. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian
Choosing a mask … sale of Oriental art during at Sotheby's. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian

Writing yourself a pen name

This article is more than 9 years old
Authors reveal the different reasons they have adopted alternative literary identities

The realisation that if I ever managed to write a novel it would have to be under another name came 12 years ago when I was sitting in the Guardian's newsroom writing a story as Sarah Hall. An email appeared from a friend: "Have you written a novel?"

My stomach clenched. Did I exist in some parallel universe where I managed to write fiction instead of stories about libel cases and child abductions? No, I was a reporter, nothing else.

I clicked on Yahoo and sure enough, there she was: another Sarah Hall, who had written a novel called Haweswater. The idea that someone a year younger than me could have written a book seemed incredible; but more appalling was the fact that she shared my name.

I could never do it now. Even if I managed to summon up the confidence to write a novel – trusting to an imagination that I thought had been killed off by an English degree and seven years of journalism – I could never be published as me. Someone had got there first.

Ten years on, my literary doppelganger hoved back into view when I first contacted my agent. "Sarah Hall," I signed the letter, and added: "(not the Man Booker-shortlisted one.)"

In the intervening decade, the other Sarah Hall had published three further novels, all either award-winning or Man Booker-longlisted, and an award-winning book of short stories. A fortnight before we submitted to publishers, in October last year, she won the BBC National Short Story award. When I used the name in my biography to be submitted to publishers – a subconscious slip as I'd long accepted I would have to abandon it – my agent reminded me, gently: "I really don't think you can be Sarah Hall."

Of course, pseudonyms have a long heritage. Think of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) or Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (the Brontë sisters); George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair); James Herriot (James Wight); John le Carré (David Cornwell); Lee Child (Jim Grant), SJ Parris (Stephanie Merritt) or the crime writer Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling). In Rowling's case, a pseudonym promised more artistic freedom: the possibility not to have The Cuckoo's Calling viewed through the distorting prism of Harry Potter.

More prosaically, a new name can be useful for commercial reasons, if one name hasn't sold well; or to allow a writer the chance to re-brand themselves and write in a different genre.

As one pseudonymous author puts it: "With social media … there's a subtle move towards developing an author brand to match the books. And obviously that's easier if you're starting from scratch!"

For Sue Mongredien, then a children's writer, becoming Lucy Diamond was a necessity when she started writing bestselling adult fiction.

"My first adult book was a bit racy so we needed to keep the genres separate. I'd just written a children's story called Lucy the Diamond Fairy (under another pseudonym) and so the name came from there."

Using a pseudonym can be freeing, she said: "I could reinvent myself all over again if I decided to try a completely different genre, for instance."

But that creative freedom may diminish if the writer's identity is revealed. As journalist Jonathan Freedland, aka thriller writer Sam Bourne, says: "Is it liberating? It was at first – when the book was just a manuscript sent to publishers and no one knew it was me. As soon as that secret was out, the name itself stopped making a difference to the writing process. But fiction – for a journalist – is hugely liberating, whatever the name on the cover."

Yet, if adopting a pen name can offer a writer creative freedom, there are drawbacks. Choosing a different name creates a layer of deception between writer and reader in an era in which social media strives to ram that gap closed. (Although, conversely, adopting a persona offers a layer of protection from intrusive questions and increasingly personal Goodreads and Amazon reviews.)

If you try to keep your identity secret, you can't go to events or festivals; be pictured in newspapers, or be open about your possible success. And, if you become hugely successful, you'll have to come out eventually – as Madeleine Wickham, the author of the Sophie Kinsella books, did. After a certain level of success it's somehow more respectful to be honest with your readers.

Mongredien admits: "I do feel ambivalent. It's good in that it keeps things separate but at the same time I find it really odd, at publisher's events for instance, when I'm introduced as Lucy. I always explain it's a pen name because I feel like a fraud otherwise. I explain my reason and people are fine with it: they understand it's done a lot."

Freedland also admits to feeling conflicted. "I was once out with my kids when a double-decker bus drove past us with an ad on one side announcing the new Sam Bourne novel. I thought then it'd be nice if that was their dad's real name on there, if they saw their own family name. But my younger son [Sam] at least gets a private thrill every time he sees Sam Bourne: as far as he's concerned, it's him."

I certainly found the process of coming up with a convincing pseudonym disorientating. I tried the Sophie Kinsella formula of a middle name and mother's maiden name – and came up with Elizabeth Jelbert who sounded too elderly, and quaint, to have written my novel. Eliza, Lizzie, and Liz tethered me too firmly to a different age.

Freedland, having written a non-fiction book, Jacob's Gift – the title inspired by the birth of his first child – knew he needed to be Sam to prevent any sibling jealousy. "I saw the pseudonym as a way to even things up."

"The last name was a pleasing coincidence," he adds. "My agent reached for 'Bourne' as a place holder: he'd passed a poster advertising The Bourne Identity movie on his way to the key meeting with the publisher. But I liked it. The Righteous Men, my first novel, was hatched in 2004. When was my son Sam born? Also 2004. Sam born, Sam Bourne. The name felt right."

For a while I toyed with a name that incorporated both my children's. But, in the end, I realised I was no good at any kind of deception and opted for the solution staring me in the face: I used my married name.

It still feels strange to see it on the cover, since Sarah Vaughan has never written professionally. And yet, perhaps it is apt. Though I would have loved Sarah Hall to have written The Art of Baking Blind, she belongs to a world of 6-800-word news reports, press conferences and lobby lunches. She might have been allowed a drop intro – and encouraged "to sparkle some star dust" as one news editor once put it – but she would never have written this.

The Art of Baking Blind, Sarah Vaughan, is published by Hodder & Stoughton

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