Should E.F. Blevins or EF (Beth) Blevins be my new penname?

Right away I'm going to tell you that this is a garbage post that you probably shouldn't read.

It is the first and probably only post I'm going to write specifically for an Internet search engine. I am trying to see if "E.F. Blevins" is a searchable term and how easily it is found, before I consider changing it to my penname.

As I wrote months ago, there are a lot of Beth Blevinses already floating around on the Internet. Since then, through a daily Google vanity search for "Beth Blevins" I've discovered many more, even after subtracting those I already knew about: Beth Blevins the doula, the realtor, the "gather the women" promoter. And still more pop up every day. There's a Beth Blevins who's in a graduate journalism program, using "Beth Blevins" as part of her byline. A Beth Blevins who writes diddits on movies (whatever that is). And then there are all the Facebook Beth Blevinses who come onto FB each week, and/or add new friends.

I'm OK with being EF Blevins or E.F. Blevins (despite the fact that someone told me it sounds too much like JK Rowling). I like not being so easily identified as one gender or another. I'm not so sure I like the way some people will pronounce it: "Eff Blevins!"

I suppose I could eventually be known as "the writer formerly known as Beth Blevins."

Oh, wait, I forgot to see if anyone else is going by E.F. Blevins. I'll know in a few minutes, after this is posted, and after I start to search for it.

Can a writer be attention-shy and successful?

While waiting for my son on Sunday afternoon, I tried to make a short video of myself using my new (cheap) Flip camcorder and found I had nothing to say when the camera was pointed at me.

How can a person who proclaims herself to be so visual and verbal be so shy when it comes to presenting herself in person?  Aim a camera at me or have me stand up and share my thoughts in a crowd and my mind freezes, but I'm able to pour words onto a page without any hesitation, whether spontaneously or on-cue. I can more easily shape my thoughts with my fingers than my mouth.

I'd thought about creating a video for YouTube where I would read some of my musings and link to my blog, just to garner more traffic to the site. Given my discomfort at being taped or photographed, I'm obviously not going to be any kind of visual media star. I am uncomfortable being the center of attention. I prefer being on the sidelines, tucked into a corner, scribbling, or speaking among friends, in a lively give-and-take.

Would I really want to garner a lot of traffic to this site? Perhaps I would feel more shy about writing a few paragraphs of whatever was on my mind if I knew, right away, 5,000 people were waiting to devour it. The words would have too much weight, then; I'm not sure I could get them out. When I write blog posts now, it is to a quiet, unseen audience. It is the writing itself that is the focus, the joy of getting the words out and shaping ideas, without any need to persuade or influence.

Yet, I don't want to end up like women who have kept their thoughts in notebooks that are tossed into the fire or sent, unread, to the dump after they die. Is there a middle ground here? Perhaps to be just a little bit read, by a wise and selective few or by a small crowd of friends?

Mainly I write these blog posts so I will have a place to store my thoughts, which won't disappear if my hard disk crashes or my house burns down. And also so I will write something at least once a week; otherwise, the time would probably slip by and I wouldn't write anything down.

So, why should I expect readers to seek out my small musings when this is really no more an electronic version of my writer's notebook? I don't have the answer for that right now.

Maybe all writers need pen names now, given our Googlubiquity

It just so happens that the same day I was invited to participate in yet another list exercise on Facebook (this one called “The Name Game”), I  discovered that there are several other Beth Blevinses in the United States who write blogs.

The Name Game asks you to combine your and your family's names to create new names that are sometimes silly, sometimes distinct. For example, combine your grandfathers' first names to create your Nascar name (mine would be "Parks Monroe"), or your mother’s and father’s middle names to create your Witness protection name ("Rose Bret"). 

Despite my list-burn-out (25 Random Things being the main culprit), I probably would have been drawn to the Name Game since my southern family has such great first names: Guy, Bertha, Stella, Lola Belle, Maxie, Collie, Monroe, Hobson, Mattie. But realizing my lack of uniqueness, even in the blogosphere, spurred me on. I was in search of a new name.

I already knew there were other Beth Blevinses in the world. I started running vanity searches as soon as Google became available. There is a golfer Beth Blevins, a doula/nurse Beth Blevins and a realtor Beth Blevins. I long ago corresponded with the writer-editor-intuitive Beth Blevins who lives in California after finding her web site (we both agreed we should hold a "Beth Blevins" convention someday.)

Still, I clung to my name. It has a certain alliteration and, well, it's what I'm used to.

However, to see that I am not the only Beth Blevins in the more limited world of the blogosphere was a blow from which I'm not sure I can recover. 

There is a Beth Blevins who blogs about World of Warcraft in a blog called "The Family Business" (which uses the same template I originally used with “Writing Home”). The writer-editor Beth Blevins in California has a blog called "Sacred Feminine Rising"—the postings appear to be descriptions of meditations.  The realtor Beth Blevins appears to have reserved blog space, but has yet to post.

Here are my options, I think:

• I could choose some variation of "Beth Blevins": My gmail account is "thebethblevins" since "bethblevins" was already taken. But, as a byline, "The Beth Blevins" is just too pretentious, and most catalogers would drop the "The" anyway. Perhaps I could go by the hybrid single name, "Beblevins," which I have used for several email accounts, or split it into "Be Blevins"—but it reminds me too much of all those placards people put on their kitchen walls, or in their gardens, like "Be Peace" or "Just Be." Just Be Blevins.
  
  
• I could add my middle initial or middle name; but, neither "Beth F. Blevins" nor "Beth Frances Blevins" sound that great and "Elizabeth Frances Blevins" just seems too long.
  
  
• I could use initials, e.g., "E. F. Blevins," but when I mentioned this to someone recently they said it sounded like I was "trying to be 'J.K. Rowling'."
  
  
•  Or, I could add a different/better middle initial in place of the "F.", like "Beth X. Blevins" or "Beth Z. Blevins."
  

None of these options is really grabbing me now. Taking a cue from the Name Game, perhaps I should henceforth go by my soap opera name (middle name, then place of birth).

Signing off as:

Frances Wilkesboro