Initial appellation

I’ve decided that if I’m ever to be a famous author I’ll have to ditch my name. Not for a nom de plume, mind you, but for initials.

The thing is, initials are mysterious. They make you sound important. And they’re good camouflage for a really awful name. Just ask P.G. Wodehouse, or Pelham Grenville, as his mother used to call him.

My own mother gave me a weird name, and then called me by my middle name – which is nomenclature double indemnity (or NDI). In grade school I rebelled with a code name: ALN (for my three initials). And my best friend had one: SKF (for her three initials). Yet we evidently blew our chance for literary greatness by making complete words out of our initials and calling each other “Alan” and “Skiff.”

Initials are the way to go, though. Look what they’ve done for J.K. Rowling. J.R.R. Tolkein went so far as to have four of ’em. (He took one from E. Nesbit.) A.A. Milne, T.S. Eliot and S.E. Hinton are in the club. So are G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis and e e cummings.

The blame for my absence on the NYT Bestsellers list must surely lie in my failure to go by initials. I do the A. Lynnell thing sometimes, but readily confess people don't usually notice the “A” in their rush to mispronounce the “Lynnell.”

Still, partial initialization just may be the ticket to fame and glory. It’s either that or I'll just have to entreat the great and powerful Oz. (Thank you L. Frank Baum.)

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