A Writer’s Life

I could use some advice at the moment. Over the last few days I’ve received a couple of strange comments on an old post and I’m not sure what to do about them. The post still gets traffic and the comments have nothing to do with the post, so it’s bugging me. I think anyone who stumbles across the post will be confused and I don’t like posts being hijacked by unrelated comments.

The comments are strange. They’re all from one person who accused me of “stealing” his name. He thinks I shouldn’t call myself CJ on my blog, like I’m ashamed of my full name because I don’t use it… I just don’t get it. CJ is a nickname my parents use; they’re my initials, so how is that stealing someone’s name? And there are millions of other CJs, have I stolen their names too?

I answered the comments but to be honest they’re insulting and I want to delete them. The reason I haven’t yet is because I don’t want it to seem like censorship and as I’m still not getting WP’s emails, I wasn’t sure if I should keep the comments as a record. So I was wondering what you think? Should I move them to another post or just delete them? What do you do with strange comments?

What I still don’t understand is why it’s such a problem. Is he not used to blogs, so the idea of using a nickname seems strange? Or am I missing something? I use CJ to differentiate between my writing and my offline life and it’s something a lot of writers do for varying reasons; JK Rowling, JG Ballard, TA Barron, PD James, SE Hinton… I could name another dozen off the top of my head.

I know some people don’t like pen names, so maybe that’s part of it. Writers are often criticised for using them (particularly to appeal to more readers) but there are legitimate reasons for using one. Andy McNab can’t use his real name for security reasons and many writers use a pseudonym to write in a different style, like Ruth Rendell as Barbara Vine. As a writer I’ve always liked the idea of a pen name. When I first started writing I wrote under different names and I like the idea of writing under a female pseudonym. I might try it one day.

Most writers use pen names for the same reason we do as bloggers; for some anonymity and to let their ideas speak for them, rather than their identity. I hate it when people try to out them, like they’re lying because they want to write under another name. But I suppose it’s natural for readers to be curious.

I wonder how you feel about pseudonyms? Does a pseudonym put you off reading a book? If you didn’t know it was a pseudonym, would you prefer to know? Personally it doesn’t bother me; I’d rather let the book stand on its own, and that’s the same for a blog… but then I never imagined that calling myself CJ would be such a big deal! Hm, maybe Cee-Jay would be better?