The Story of a Name and an Announcement

I expected everyone reading this blog has realized that I don't use my real name. It's also probably not a surprise to find out my real name is Brianna.

In fact it's the name I'm most used to. I didn't have a nickname as a child unless you count my little brother mispronouncing it. It was always my full name. Quite a few years back now, a friend gave me the nickname Breeze, but forgot it again. I didn't forget and took it as an internet name. Later on, I replaced that with Bria Snow.

I didn't think that would be a good pen name though. It might not matter, but I'd heard that it's better to have a name in the first half of the alphabet. So I twisted my name around all backwards to come up with something that did work. Not long after that, I started my blog. That was the impulsive decision that got me semi-stuck with the name.

Yes, I do like brie cheese.

I always was reticent about sharing the existence of my blog with people I meant in real life. I was afraid they might find the pen name silly. I'm now realizing it was because I wasn't confident it was the right name. I felt it was a little silly. The few times my mother has sent me an email with a correction I needed to make and used my pen-name it seemed strange. Maybe because she never uses my real last name.

After a while, I started to get tired of being called Anna. It's a pretty common name, and I just didn't feel it fit me. Even though I use Brianna in everyday life, I've never minded being called Bri. I rather like it in fact. But if that was now my last name I couldn't be called by it without more awkwardness.

Even though I've tried my best to be honest and real in what I say on my blog, I still felt like I had split myself into two people. Both of them were me, but they had different friends. I wanted to integrate them more, but the names conflicted. I felt as if I would have to explain it too much.

So I started thinking of getting a new pen name. It was the end of September when I found one I liked. Something with Brie as my first name. Something with a rare, but easy to spell last name which felt right. I didn't want to pick just any random last name that belonged to someone else. So here it is: Brie Donning.

You might wonder while I took so long to make a change. There are a few reasons. One is that I didn't want to make the mistake of choosing a name hastily again. I wanted to be sure I wasn't going to start hating it. Another reason was that I didn't want to appear flaky. I'd had my blog for less than a year then, and wasn't ready to change. Third reason is that I have something else I wasn't ready to announce. (And there is the fact that I didn't want to build a new website/blog then. In fact I'd still rather not do it. Web design isn't really my thing.)

Since then I've started using Brie Donning in a couple of places and been connecting to more writers using Facebook (where I go by my real name). I've been detaching from my old pen name. It doesn't feel like my name any more. Just the name of my writing blog. I can't not change now.

My other announcement is that I'll be offering my services as an editor. Doing beta reading has let me see that I  would enjoy being an editor. Helping good books be better and get published is something I love doing and I'm brilliant at noticing typos. Unless they're my own that is.

Granted this isn't the only idea I've had to help people with their books. At one point I wanted to be an audio book narrator, but I hate fixing my recordings. If there was a job that involved promoting all my favourite books I'd love that too. But authors have street teams, not paid publicists and publishers have books I wouldn't be excited about, so it's not happening.

I started thinking about becoming an editor before I decided to change my pen name, but I always felt that I wouldn't do it under the name Anna S, Brie. Once again I'd subconsciously thought it sounded less professional.

The long and the short of it is that I'm going to have a new website opening up early next month under my new name and I'll be changing the names on all my social media. I don't know exactly how long things will take, but they'll happen. As you can all see I've done most of the work on having a new look.

I am Brie Donning, signing out. God bless you all.