Hello, I’m using a pen name for my fiction writing. This is nothing more than the initials of my first and middle names, and my maiden name. I am not doing this for privacy, but mostly out of a desire to honor my roots and to keep my fiction writing separate from the more religiously oriented writing I’ve done under my married name. (My husband is a pastor and we run a non-profit together). So I’m setting up my author website under the pen name and I’ve sought a lot of advice on how to query my novel. Although there is some disagreement, the advice for the most part that I’ve received has been to use my legal name, with a “writing as ‘pen name’” at the appropriate point in the query. My question is, does this same rule apply when querying a magazine or publication with an article submission? Would the “writing as ‘pen name’” look completely ridiculous if I’m trying to publish an article or does anyone ever do this?
Just use whatever name is good for you and don't care what outsiders tell you to do or is it ridiculous or not in someones mind.
My advice: query under your real name. You can mention in the query letter that you write under a pen name, and what that pen name is.
