Who is D. Drak?
A conversation with a pseudonym and its writer.
Dorothy Drakopoulos, a sweet and creative university student, swivels her takeaway coffee cup stained with bright purple lipstick and pulls at the hem of her black dress. She looks around and watches the other people walking by; her eyes follow a mother and daughter carrying several shopping bags. She turns back to me and smiles as nerves get the best of her and she pushes her blonde hair behind her ear.
D. Drak, a serious and focused writer, also sits with me. Her back is straight, she is not distracted; she keeps eye contact with me and is always prepared to answer my questions. D. Drak wears what Dorothy wears, drinks the same coffee and leaves the same shade of lipstick behind; only she doesn't fiddle as she speaks.
Confusing? Strange? Not really — because they are the same; they are both Dorothy. No, she doesn't have a split personality or is bipolar. D. Drak is the pen name of Dorothy Drakopoulos.
Dorothy and I have classes together at RMIT and have been able to form a nice group of friends. We grab lunch before and after classes, meet up over breaks and help each other with our writing projects. Our conversations cover an array of topics both serious and cooky, helpful and advisory. Last week, over a Nando’s lunch, Dorothy and I were talking about pen names; specifically, Dorothy’s use of one and my seeming boycott of them. “I wanted a name that was simple and brief and didn’t pinpoint me as either a female or male,” Dorothy tells me as we wait for our orders. I ask when she decided to use a pen name, “Since the moment I knew I wanted to be a writer. I never intended on using my full name.”
“My surname is a typical long Greek one, and from experience I've come to see that most successful Greeks shorten their surnames. I think it just sounds better in print.” As she talks, I can see the D. Drak persona take hold, as if she were meeting with an agent or editor. She stops fiddling with her phone and keeps her hands in her lap.
I ask her: “So you're a pro-pen name kind of gal?”
She laughs. “I'm very pro pen name. I think most people who do change their names end up with something a lot more appealing that rolls off the tongue.”
Admittedly, pen names are very successful. Many readers grew up thinking that the name on the book was the name of the person who wrote it; it was logical to surmise that Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland and that Mark Twain wrote the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn when those were just the pen names used by the authors. Charles Dodgson wrote under the pen name Lewis Carroll because he was a deacon and an aspiring reverend, and didn't want his life as a man of God to interfere with the story. Samuel Clemens wrote under the pen name, Mark Twain, to playfully fool people because he could. Clemens later revealed where he found “Mark Twain”: “Back in Mississippi, in riverboat times, the sailors had to regularly check the depth of the water so that the boat wouldn't scrape the bottom. Weighted ropes were used to measure out two fathoms (six feet). In Twain’s research, if the mark on the line said twain (two fathoms), they called out ‘mark twain!’” The true identity of these authors did nothing to discourage people from buying and reading their books.
I ask her: “So you’re a pro-pen name kind of gal?” She laughs. “I’m very pro pen name. I think most people who change their names end up with something a lot more appealing.
The purpose of using a pen name also varies from writer to writer — it’s not a cowardly way of ducking from the critics, or “haters” of society. Nor is it to create a barrier between rejection and the writer’s feelings. Anagrams and initials are not a lie to the reader, but an entirely made-up name feels like one. Through it would be understood if that was the reason behind the decision with the way today’s technology is. Several very real reasons for using a pen name are more warranted, with the internet and people’s sleuthing ways of finding out information. Masking your gender, possible genre shifts, disguising profanity, identity safety and moonlighting: all are valid arguments—but even then, the writer’s true identity can be discovered.
Our lunch finally arrives, a classic chicken burger, without tomato, a meal for Dorothy and a classic pita meal for me, both lemon and herb basting. It’s nothing like what our Greek mothers cook for us at home: stuffed peppers and tomatoes, baklava, tsoureki, kourambiedes and other delicious garlic-infused dinners. We eat our chips, with no peri-peri salt, Dorothy’s phone lights up and she sends a reply as she tells me more about her reasons for some privacy.
“The everyday Dorothy is different to the writer version of me, D. Drak. That’s not to say I am not being myself; it just means that Dorothy Drakopoulos is a crazy, fun and loving girl whilst D. Drak is a woman serious about her writing career. I want my writing to be a big part of who I am, but not be what ultimately defines me.” Which makes me ask, what will ultimately define you? “I think what defines me is my passion for the things I love and writing happens to be one of the things I love, along with my family, friends and pop culture.”
Pop culture, by that she means . . .
“I guess I love pop culture because I love anything that is fictional. Like movies, books, comics etc., I like the fantasy element of it all; how we can escape reality if even for a second.”
Nom de plumes have many other uses; they can be noms-de-guerre or “war names”, online handles or user names; actors use stage names and graffiti artists use tags. This need to separate the self from the art is an age-old one for people who desperately want their projects to be out in the world but aren't confident to put their names to them. One example that explains this is, Carmela Ciuraru’s exploration into the notion that everyone’s a brand and that privacy seems to be a relic in our modern culture. She examines famous aliases and the authors behind them in her book Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms. To Carmela, the pseudonym is a prank, and the motives behind adopting one are infinitely complex and sometimes mysterious even to the writer. One reality of the alias is, as she puts it, “in the absence of real-life companionship, the pseudonymous entity can serve as a confidant, keeper of secrets and protective shield”. This is what she calls the essence of the pseudonym, which was meant to remain the same through time.
Like many philosophers Ciuraru describes an “alter ego” as someone else wearing a mask and pretending to be the writer, but as still another person entirely. The two are not the same person but inhabit the same body, with no psychological illness present, they simply co-exist; as one tries to tell a story, the other stays silent. A very popular, and much discussed, an example is Clark Kent and Superman; when Clark Kent puts on the cape, Superman takes over and Clark Kent becomes the “silent ego” as Superman soars through the sky as the “loud ego”. When Superman’s work is done, Clark Kent becomes the “loud ego” and Superman the “silent ego”. Much the same can be applied to the nom de plume as he/she writes and the original ego, i.e. Dorothy.
We've almost finished our lunches; it’s a race to see who finishes their last remaining chips first and I'm winning. Dorothy wipes her fingers and fiddles with her blonde hair again, she pushed it back behind her ears but it doesn't stay there. I ask her if she is afraid that people will find out that D. Drak is a pen name. Dorothy takes a minute, she takes a sip of her drink before answering: “If I ever do find success and make it globally, I’m more than sure people will discover my name, but it’s not an issue for me. It’s just to disguise my gender by shortening my name to make it easier for readers and myself.”
Saint Dorothy! Making it easier on us, her readers, how sweet I say, at which she smiles. I start to spout how it takes the magic out of reading, that it’s disenchanting to find a writer is using a pseudonym, but Dorothy is of the firm belief that the magic doesn't fizzle out once the reader discovers the secret; it’s not an issue for her. Dorothy aims to write a lot of fantasy and sci-fi and keep the door open for non-fiction writing, much like her inspiration, JK Rowling. Not in any way to emulate her, but to take a cue from her and make the hoopla about the writing, not the person behind the curtain. Certainly, with fantasy and sci-fi writing, she’s creating new ideas for people to marvel at.
The chip race is over. I won, and we walk towards the first escalators we’ll take to get to the trains. We stay together as we descend further into Melbourne Central. When we reach the trains, we each agree that it’s a good idea to have a pen name handy. Dorothy still stands where she began, firmly with the belief that she’s always believed in; “having a pen name and using it for publishing work is a good thing and nothing will change my mind.” I, however, still feel a sting of disenchantment along with my understanding of the pseudonym.
