Meet Soo Doh Nim, friend to all Creative Artists
December 1, 2007
I’m a phonetic prankster as you’ll discover if you read much of my work or chat with me online or otherwise. Forget that sentence. Yeah, yeah, I know “Where is your work apart from here at the Free Articulator?” It’s coming, believe me, all you see happening at the Free Articulator is just part of the set-up.
This is a Creative Artist Marketing article. Soo Doh Nim is not a real person, but a great friend and you really should get acquainted with Soo, because she has a lot to offer every creative individual, and I don’t mean litigation.
What is it? The Origins and use of Pseudonyms
The pseudonym is defined as a noun: a fictitious name used when the person performs a particular social role.
There are different types of pseudonym variously called allonyms, anthroponyms, and the alias. Each is quite distinct in terms of description and function and it’s important to grok the distinction.
Pseudonym and alias are pretty much interchangeable terms and when one is referring to an author they are often known as a pen name. But you can read more about these things at the Wikipedia links provided.
There are some famous pseudonyms. Arguably one of the most famous is Mark Twain but it’s not even a name, really, it is only a name because Clemens made it one (and that’s worth thinking about). It’s the call of deckhands on riverboats as they measure the depth of the water between the keel of a riverboat and the river bottom. Samuel L. Clemens chose the name, and wrote most of his published works under that particular nom de plume. He was also one of the most successful self-published writers in history.
Think about his choice of name and the nature of his stories The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer for a moment and you realize the man had marketing savvy, and to some extent he was a phonetic prankster. His most famous stories took place in and around the Mississippi river.
When, Why and How to use a Pseudonym
Regardless of the nature of the internet and the intrusiveness of eroded rights, the pseudonym is understood to be a useful and necessary part of the creative life.
When do you use a Pseudonym?
- Identity Protection - You use a pseudonym to protect your identity for as long as possible. Anonymity helps you to do quiet research, ask questions and afford you the luxury of receiving mostly true and honest answers when you’re researching for a story, or a nonfiction topic that you’re planning to write about. When writing an exposé it can be vital to protect your identity, particularly if you are dealing with unsavory characters, or people and groups who have no scruples when it comes to protecting their interests and are often willing to go to extreme, law-breaking methods to preserve them.
- Public vs. Private Sanity - When you take on a creative life, then there are two lives you will lead and it is important to be able to separate them if you are to maintain a perspective on who you really are.
- Separation Identity Protection - To maintain your sanity as one in charge of your career it is helpful to establish a clear separation of identity and role or function. You should sip from the public cup, and drink deep of who you really are, for the public cup will appear to run over, and it will run over you, if you let it.
- Developing a Marketable Memorable Name - Sometimes, your own name is just not memorable, and far too common and what you want is a brand that sets you apart from others, and which does not confuse you with other people and create problems for them and you.
- Image Creation - this is about marketing, and most specifically about positioning, which will be left for discussion in the Marketing section of the Free Articulator, at a later date.
- Research Cover - the pseudonym as a Research Cover permits more accurate research that will not be influenced by a name that may be very well known to others. When people know they are being observed, or likely to be observed, their behavior is different.
- Character Testing - this is really research cover but with a certain degree of specificity that illustrates a point. Sometimes, as an author, you want to have an experience as a character from your story. But then you’re really adopting an alias. It might just be for a moment, a few sentences, or even for the length of a game online. Computer games that use in-game text can be very useful in this way. We’ll talk about this in the Writing Section at a later date. It’s where you take the name of the character and you go out and be the character.
Creating Your Pseudonym
If you’re serious about the reason for using a pseudonym, and it is vital to the security of you and your family then pick something that is nothing like your own name. Have all author-addressed mail delivered to your publisher’s mailing address and, instruct and trust them to forward it to you as it arrives.
The pseudonym of an author or Creative Artist is a part of who they are as a public person, insofar as they wish to be public. It’s often a Success Protection Device, which is to say that when one anticipates success, then you need to plan for it, and that means protecting you, your family, pets and property from people who lose touch with reality and think that because you are so successful that they are entitled to a piece of you.
A pseudonym you’re planning to use as part of your creative life should contain some layering, which is to say some substance, and depth. In other words, it should mean something, and have some significance for the task you are engaged in. Why?
Because meaning is important and people love to come to know the hidden. We are intellectual creatures, curious adventurers and explorers, who love discovery, because we have minds, intellects that love to be entertained and entranced.
How do you set up a Pseudonym?
You don’t need to do much more than just start using one if your use is only intended to afford you some small amount of anonymity. Just realize that a pseudonym will, unless carefully guarded, always come out in the end. It is by use that it becomes a legal name. And when it does it also becomes an item that is a brand and recognizable and able, under certain conditions, to be trademarked. This will be covered in the Intellectual Property series.
In free countries, the use of a pseudonym is protected under the law for certain purposes and as long as one does nothing fraudulent, then this is perfectly useful and legitimate in the eyes of the law.
You should carefully record your first use of your pseudonym.
You should then spend some time developing it and making it known. Getting it out and about.
“Your Cover is Blown!”
It’s not the end of the world. Plan for it. Prepare for it. And realize that by the time it has been blown, it has served its purpose anyway. In the first place, you’re not a Valerie Plame-Wilson, usually, and if you are, then you should move immediately and have an entirely new identity ready.
If your ‘cover’ is blown then you are successful. You’ve caught the attention of the world and people know who you are, and you’re making enough waves good or bad, that you’ve drawn the attention of millions. Hopefully, it is the former and not the latter, though any marketeer worthy of the name would be able to work with either situation if they truly know their craft.
Stories are precious to human beings; they are one of the principle means by which we learn, and thus we always conquer the bad and these are the lessons of mistake.
NDK Creative Artist is not a Pseudonym
People often make the mistake of thinking that NDK Creative Artist is a pseudonym. It’s not. It’s a lot of things, but not a pseudonym. Did you remember to forget the first sentence in this article?
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