The use of a pseudonym is a very personal decision, and there are hundreds of reasons why to use one, just as there are reasons not to. My particular case revolves less around anonymity, and more around career differentiation.
I’m a jack-of-all-trades, master of none— eager and ambitious to dabble in anything and everything that catches my interest to the fullest. At the moment I split my life into three key niches, or three separate careers that all feed off of each other: Psychology, Art, and Writing.
I’m not unaccustomed to responding to a variety of names depending on the situation. My academic identity differs from my familial one, for example. Mainly because my mother and I carry the same name, and so in order to avoid confusion, I’m exclusively called by my middle one while among family.
In writers its use is tremendously common in order to differentiate genres. If you want a Gothic Romance, you’ll go for Victoria Holt, not Jean Plaidy, though they’re both penned by Eleanor Hibbert. It’s the same with Anne Rice. You know what you’re getting based on the pseudonym. Anne Rice differs from Anne Rampling, who differs from A.N Roquelaure’s work.
I do the same with my careers.
Let’s say my full name is Violeta Camille Valery Gautier:
Camille Gautier is the Artist
Violeta C. Valery is the Psychologist
Violeta Valery is the Writer.
They’re all the same person. The name is what essentially briefs you in terms of what you’re getting. It’s a difficult thing for me to be split in three and not worry about how one name’s reputation might affect the other’s. For example, how my writing or my art might affect my reputation as a practicing psychologist once I graduate.
Essentially, there should be no clashes or contradictions, given all three take the same sex-positive stance, but there’s always the notion that something found in my fictional writing might harm the credibility of the practicing psychologist.
The idea that everything I might say is linked to my professional life is a frightening thing, but there’s no use living life tiptoeing around. One needs to be firm and unapologetic, even if it means going against the flow and risking alienating a few here and there.