What is in a name…?

Now I would love to start this post by saying my mother named me Amelia but she didn’t. I don’t even know if the name suits the person I am!

You see, my born name is a very plain name. Nothing alluring, it doesn’t roll off your tongue when it is called, it’s just me. So when I started publishing stories on my old blog, I wanted to keep who I really was under wraps.

Why, you may ask? Well, I kept my writing private from my normal everyday life and my job. I didn’t want any negative responses to my stories, if I got any, for my family to read (I am still terrible at receiving negative remarks!) Basically I was scared. In my head I had a plan that if it went wrong, if I was going to be chased away from the writing game with flaming torches, I would wipe out Amelia. The name was my protection.

In the nearly 3 years that I have adopted Amelia, I have been very lucky and very thankful with the responses, and have only wanted to wipe her out twice. YES TWICE. The first time was when my naivety, at the beginning of social media, became abused and the second when my kindness was stretched to the limit (and this is still boarderlining). I’d rather I didn’t have to go through both of those times but social media can be a blackhole and I just happen to fall into the pit. Thankfully I learnt and grew from the experience, I’m cautious and my words are thought through, mostly! Maybe that is the reason for the new Avi, the lack of nylon posts and the new blog…maybe!

Now I view Amelia as my protection. Sometimes Amelia and me overlap, they are bound too, I am Amelia after all. Away from social media and writing though, I am just me. People who know I write will call me by my name, those who don’t, call me Amelia. I answer to both. My personality is both. I type as both, but I do not stop living my life to be Amelia.

Calling or using my real name on an Amelia social site, well that is just wrong. Calling me Amelia when I am at Uni, that’s wrong too, especially during class!!

So what is this blog trying to say…it is okay to have a pen name. Many writers, actors, musicians do. I’m not deceiving anyone by being Amelia, because it is me. I’m not pretending to be someone else, I don’t use fake pictures, I don’t post things that are fake, I am me.

I wear a veil of a different name, an invisible clock so to speak. But I Am Still Me.

So

What is in a name…?