The Story Behind My Pen Name | An Introduction

This is a journey every creator will understand — especially my fellow writers and anyone who leaves prints of their heart and soul in their work and can’t help but to do so, regardless of whether the piece is practice or masterpiece.

How do you maintain privacy while publicly creating vulnerable and emotional content?

I’ve thought for years about how to dance along that delicate line of sharing vulnerable, raw emotions through my writing while learning to rein in over-sharing and offering my trust where it is not deserved or necessitated… and I believe I’ve found a path that works for me.

For the past year, I’ve pulled away from the internet as a place to share vulnerable stories and let down walls that might protect my sometimes-delicate psyche during uncertainty or periods of learning, adjustment, and messy growth.

Why not just keep everything private?

Some people might think it makes the most sense not to share vulnerable or personal things at all, but that has never been the way for me. I gave it a good try these past few months and here’s the conclusion I’ve come to:

I love to share as I’m learning and to show the messy parts of becoming new in some way — the vulnerability and rawness of the middle at the journey can be so incredibly beautiful and inspiring, and they can also be exactly the spell someone needs for comfort, reassurance, and hope in the midst of their own dark nights of the soul and rocky beginnings.

What’s wrong with being an open book?

I don’t think being an open book is inherently wrong. For me, though, the problem with sharing vulnerably is that sometimes that exposure puts me in a place where my sense of self and my security or ability to be declared valid or ridiculous ends up in the hands of an audience, and I forget my own power and responsibility to myself as my own person. I can be incredibly sensitive to rejection and sometimes I will subconsciously wait to form my own opinion until I know what someone else’s is. Overcoming this is important to me, but it is also a LOT of work and an ongoing journey. Dealing with this stunts my writing and creative sharing significantly and creates an exhausting and sometimes overwhelming cycle for me. I want to make this easier on myself so that I can grow and share in my own time.

In my slow return to the internet, I’ve focused mostly on photography and short fictional stories I’ve written… but I’ve infused these little pieces of my work with the raw emotion and perspective I experience in the moment.

My philosophy on talking about dreams, goals, and works in progress

There are so many quotes about working privately and letting the result of your work do the talking, or advising against telling anyone your plans before you achieve the end-goal. I believe, by sharing the emotion and tension of the messy moments on a journey, I now understand how to make these words of wisdom work for me. Now I’m able to comfort, connect, and console my readers through words and pictures depicting relatable struggles like working through betrayal, self-doubt and insecurity, overcoming fears, and reveling in terrifyingly wonderful surreal experiences without sharing details that belong only to those present for the experience on a personal level.

A surprising storytelling achievement unlocked by intentional discretion:

Something I’ve found through this new approach is that I am becoming a better storyteller, because now before I share, I consider if and how the story I’d like to tell is relevant to whoever I am telling it to. I consider things I might like my readers to understand about me or ways I might see the world that have colored my unique lens and how I might communicate that to someone who hasn’t had such experiences, all in a way that honors their perspective as well.

Sometimes as a writer, my goal is to shake the readers’ view of the world, and sometimes the purpose of my prose is to simply take the reader for a stroll in a stranger’s shoes. Other times, the intended effect is to soothe or provide a sense of camaraderie in a world that leaves too many feeling alone and uncertain… I have so much to learn, and I am happy to feel like I’ve unlocked a new level in the art of storytelling — as if I’ve uncovered the very secret that makes so many of my favorite storytellers deeply impactful and inspiring to me.

I’m using a pen name for the first time.

I’ve been playing with the idea of a pen name for quite a while, and now that this perspective is settling into my natural method of connection and storytelling, it feels like the time is right. A pen name no longer feels like a silly mask or a way of hiding, though I do appreciate the veil of privacy and preservation it puts between me as a person in my local community. Mostly, taking on a pen name feels like a curtain breaking up the contrast between reality and the gentle world of feeling and fantasy I’m inviting my readers into.

The story behind my pen name:

The name I’ve picked is deeply personal and precious to me, and suits the genre, audience, form, and function of my written work as well as my growing collection of macro photography. The name belongs to my family and envelops me like a hug from a woman who left this world before I ever saw the sky, but who most certainly must have loved me through my mother’s belly in the months leading to my birth. One of the few people I know to have shown my mother the depth and consistency of love she deserves, a love that I wish she could have had so much more of and that I hope to one day know how to share with children who come to know me in my old age. The name belongs to my great grandfather as well, the first hand I ever held of someone who was preparing to leave this world behind — the first dying man I ever made laugh, who’s fuzzy hair and giant ears that forgot to stop growing light up in my memory with a warm and fuzzy haze I’ve since captured in photos of dandelions and bumblebees.

How my pen name relates to my work:

It makes sense to me that great-grandparents names should introduce my folklorian fairytales to the world in the years ahead. Folklore is the language of ancestors and grandparents, it’s a local language but it travels and changes and grows as long as there are childlike hearts to listen and learn from it, to love it enough to tell it again and to explore its presence in their lives. My great-grandparents were small-town people. They were community people. They were people of love and kindness. They were the friends who would show up to help, who would give without asking how much or why. I imagine they were also the kind of people who didn’t lock their doors, who thought if someone needed something badly enough to steal it from a stranger, they could have it then. In some ways, I am proud of that, and in others, I imagine there must be a La Fontaine fable that expresses what I feel — something about taking care against sly foxes or else deserving the thievery you are fool enough to cry about once it happens.

It breaks my heart that people can be intentionally cruel and deceitful to someone who is obviously taking a chance on them as an act of kindness and in good faith… but my own life has shown me that, resulting of injustice or not, I have to take responsibility for any misfortune that finds me in this life. But my great-grandparents were strong people, too. They knew how to take care of their belongings, their loved ones, and of themselves. A storyteller cannot tell stories for long if they are not strongly supported and cared for, by themselves and through their community. In taking on a pen name from my great-grandparents, I hope to clothe my work in the strength and dignity their legacy left behind for me to study.

Thank you for taking the time to get to know this little piece of my journey. I am so very excited to introduce you to the new character in my life, the author of my books, the spirit behind my photography, and the new writer of these blogs.

Introducing:
Vera Lee Bird

I write fairytales and folklore for the child within us all in this chaotic modern world. I write to offer peace, comfort, rose-colored glasses when needed, courage always, strength, and a new way to express love and kindness to everyone you encounter in your life. I hope that my work touches your heart and ripples. I hope you go on to tell stories of you own, repaint the scenes that haunt you, and make peace with any ghosts or demons you’ve been trying outrun. I will share with you as I do all the same.

— Vera