Wolfspeak: Why I love and hate Wolf Pascoe

Wolf Pascoe, if you don’t know by now, is a pen name.

I took it for confidentiality’s sake when I started blogging about my son. When I started working on Breathing for Two, my first ebook, I realized I was saying things about my day job that were probably better left unsaid, if I meant to hold on to it.

So I decided that Wolf would get the author’s credit.

I like the name Wolf. It belonged to my grandfather, my father’s father, whom I was named for. My parents didn’t give me the whole name, just the first initial. Pascoe came from my best friend in the sixth grade.

After two years blogging as Wolf, the whole thing has sort of grown on me. I like the new name better than the old one. The old name is unmistakably Jewish and that always bothered me. It bothers me that it bothered me, but there it is. The strange thing is that Jewish themes keep creeping into Wolf’s writing, much more than they did the other fellow’s.

You might think from the above that writing incognito frees you to talk about anything you want any way you want. But you’d be wrong. On my blog Just Add Father, I want people to like me. So Wolf is a nice guy. He doesn’t use four letter words. He doesn’t say bad things about his family. I worry I’ve painted him into a corner. Inside Wolf is a dangerous guy waiting for his chance.

Then there’s the whole problem of career. So far, Wolf writes about his kid and his job. The other fellow writes plays and poetry. Wolf gets no credit for those plays, and the other guy gets no credit for what Wolf writes. How do I tell people who like Wolf that they should check out the other guy’s poetry? How do I tell people who like the other guy that they should check out Wolf’s ebook?

Down the line I expect to write fiction. Who’s going to get credit for that? What the hell does it matter? Did Shakespeare feel this way, writing all those plays for Francis Bacon?

It’s the kind of thing that keeps you up at night.

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