I chose my pen name when I was ten, because I knew even then that my legal name would be more trouble than it was worth.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I used the pen name because I knew I wanted to write better novels under my own name someday.
When I was 15, I changed my name legally. I think it was largely due to my struggle about being gay. Everything just didn't fit, and I was trying to find things I could identify myself with, and it started with my name.
I couldn't say my own name when I was 12.
As the youngest, I wanted to be my father's son and perpetuate the family name.
The idea of a pseudonym had been flitting around my brain for a long time, along with its cognate, disappearance. In the 1980s, I published some poems under a pen name in a literary magazine to see what it would feel like. It was fun. It was even a little thrilling.
And I can't think of a reason I'd ever use a pseudonym, as I wouldn't want to publish something that I didn't like enough to put my name on it.
My name is Dylan simply because my parents did not know before I was born if I would be a boy or a girl, and Dylan was a name that worked in both cases.
Always it gave me a pang that my children had no lawful claim to a name.
I changed my name at 14 because no one outside of my family could pronounce my first name correctly.
I changed my name when I was 13. I don't know why but it made sense at the time. I wanted another identity. I wanted to reinvent myself.