In junior high, I thought the perfect alias was Desirée MacIntyre. I practiced saying it, scribbling it. Whenever I became a movie star or a secret agent, that’s the name I would use. In the meantime, I smushed my first and middle names together, and signed my seventh grade papers Jennilyn Langefeld. True story: I also dotted the i with a heart. (Don’t judge. Seventh grade is brutal.)
That was it for renaming myself, until recently.
I’m working on a handful of novels, all of which are approaching final stages. Which forces a terribly practical question: Do I want to be published under my own name?
I’ve been a bookstore clerk before, and I know how fun it is to have an author’s name that everyone misspells. Like Langefeld. The entire English-speaking population is aching to write field instead of feld. No matter how many times I spell it out for them, field is just too tempting. Bonus, there’s a silent e. Who needs a silent e? Apparently, no one.
(Also, if you say Lang-feld over and over, it sounds like a large fish falling nose over tail down a flight of wooden stairs. Lang-feld-lang-feld-lang-feld. Not the image I’m looking for.)
If it really came down to it, I could survive the fields and the fish. But for me, here’s the kicker: It is so, so easy to overidentify with my written work.
Those words and thoughts fell out of my brain onto the paper. In the novels, it’s my imagination lying bare on the page, waiting for all the cleat-wearing judges to come tearing through it. Shred my work and you’re shredding me: My temptation is always to believe that I am synonymous with my words. I’m a chronic over-identifier.
But I know I want to sell my novels. And in my genre (young adult and middle grade fantastical fiction), an author becomes her own brand. Her name stands for the work she does. … Great. Catnip to my overidentifying self.
I met a writer once who wrote a series under her own name. And the series failed. Now she can’t use her actual name for her work anymore. She publishes under a different name, because the industry is understandably skittish: no one wants to print a dud author.
So that little story kept me awake at nights. What happens when Jenn Langefeld actually means failed writer? I imagined stepping into editorial meetings and my real name slipping out. “Oh, you’re her? Scratch that contract.” The last thing my rumpled spirit needs: to turn my given name, my identity, into a brand that I sweat to uphold.
A few years ago, my older sister and I sold knitted goods on Etsy. We called our shop Squirrel + Serif. I loved having a knitting alter ego, loved building our miniature brand. If there were concerns about the knitting, I didn’t feel personally attacked. I was simply an employee of S+S, and while I cared deeply about the products, I wasn’t the same thing as them.
Suddenly a penname makes sense. What if I create a mini-brand, and write as if I’m its employee? Sounds like just enough distance, like I could trick myself into staying separate from my work.
Decision made. I started looking around for a good name. A name I can make into a pleasant little company, of which I am the chief employee, marketing division, intern, and janitor.
But every name I dreamed up felt false. It created too much distance. I felt like a fraud. At that point, why not be Desirée again and be done with it? Finally I tried one more trick: I shinnied up my family tree and had a good look around. And that’s how I came across the lovely name Lucy Flint.
The more I looked at it, the more I fell in love with the connotations. Flint is a light-making rock, right? A great name for a girl who wants to write redemptive books, to flash some light around the bookstore. And Lucy: well, for anyone growing up on Narnia stories, Lucy is never a bad choice.
Two bonus points: it’s easy to spell and doesn’t sound like a falling fish.
I don’t know overmuch about my great-grandmother Lucy, but as a child, she went west with her family on the Oregon Trail. There’s a potent metaphor, eh? What is writing but a journey? Isn’t a writer partly a pioneer? Putting down words instead of footprints, forever facing the edge of civilization as you bring your imagination to a blank page, again and again.
Okay, most of my Oregon Trail knowledge comes from the computer game, but you have to admit there are similarities. At the start of a new project, there’s all that hope and ambition and trepidation. Followed by the wearying day in, day out work of it. Traveling beside the wagon ruts of people that came before you. Passing an occasional skeleton.
Ever since trying on her name, I’ve been thinking of my writing path as a trail west, only minus the oxen. And hopefully no one dies of cholera.
***
This is my last piece on The Post Calvin, and I want to say thanks. It’s always a privilege to be part of a writing community: pioneers who travel alone don’t get far, right? So thanks for being fellow travelers, readers, and commenters.
I’m taking my new name out for a spin by building an online home at lucyflint.com. It’s in the fledgling stages, but I’m creating a site that will hopefully become part lifestyle blog, part writing site. What does it look like to live well so you can write well, and vice versa? That’s the adventure I’ll be sharing. All writers, readers, and other makers-of-things are welcome! Come visit and say hello!
Jenn Langefeld graduated from Calvin in 2006 and charged into a life of full-time novel writing. She is currently working on an exuberant, adventurous trilogy for middle grade readers. She writes under her great-grandmother’s name, Lucy Flint, and blogs about making a lionhearted writing life at lucyflint.com.
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Oh, LUCY FLINT. What a gloriously perfect name.
Best wishes and oodles of luck!
Thanks so much, Sarina! I felt so lucky to find a delightful name right there in my family, all ready to have dozens of books attached to it, I hope:)