Romeo and Juliet had name troubles. One of them a Montague and the other a Capulet (or perhaps a Jet and a Shark, if that’s more your thing), their love was forbidden by the very labels given to them by their families (or by their toe-tappin’, finger-snappin’ gangs, if that’s more your thing). But Juliet knew. She got it. Juliet knew that a simple label did not define her Romeo. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Call a rose a pickle, and it would still smell like a rose. The name does not matter.

Or does it?

I’ve read of several independent experiments that tested whether the name given to an object changes the way we smell the object. Essentially, smelly things (good, neutral, and bad) would be put into bags or otherwise hidden from view and labeled. Test subjects would then read the label, smell the substance, and their reactions were recorded. What happened? If you labeled a bag of cheddar cheese as “cheddar cheese” people reacted favorably. If you labeled the same bag as “body odor” people hated it. Guess old Bill got it wrong.

So what’s in a name? If you read the results of these experiments: a lot, apparently. And I’ve struggled with this concept for two, ten, or forty years, depending on where you start counting. If you’re reading this post and you happen to be my biological mother, you might want to skip down a bit.

For the rest of the world, I have a confession: I don’t really like my name. Meaning no disrespect to the Great Charlies of the world (Chaplin, Brown, the Unicorn, …) but the name just always felt, well, a bit dorky to me. I always wanted a real name, like Mike or Steve or maybe Tom or Richard. As I grew older though, I got used to it, and I realized it was part of my uniqueness (meaning no disrespect to the other Great Charlie Hillses of the world).

But early feelings like that never really go away. Not completely. And once I realized I wanted to write, I started thinking about using a pen name. I knew in my heart of hearts that my real name just wouldn’t look right to me, given the subject matter of interest.

Take, for example, Exhibit A:

You might look at this and think nothing of it. “Hey, great book title. Hey, I like that author. I’m going to buy it.” However that’s not how I see it.

The way I see it is represented in Exhibit B:

It just doesn’t look right. So what’s a budding author to do? Well, just make up a new name, of course! Many, many great writers have, and I bet their mothers probably didn’t even get mad at them: Lewis Carroll, George Orwell, Ayn Rand, Mark Twain, Dr. Seuss, . . . the list goes on.

But there’s a catch! Before you use a pen name you have to actually come up with it, and that’s a lot more difficult than it sounds. Sure, you could pull any two random names out of a hat (for example, “Harry” and “Potter”) and run with it, but if you’re going to go to all this trouble, shouldn’t it have some real meaning? Shouldn’t it pay homage to someone important to you? And shouldn’t it be infinitely more amazing than the name you’re leaving behind?

The answers to these questions are different for everybody, of course. For me, however, after years and years and year, I’ve at long last found the perfect pen name for me:

If you’re a fan of Cosmos or just an astronomy buff in general, then you’ve surely heard of the Drake Equation. Formulated in 1961 by Dr. Frank Drake, duly pictured here, it’s a mathematical equation designed to predict the number of possible extra-terrestrial civilizations out there. It’s fairly straightforward. First, figure out the average rate that stars are born. Next, figure what fraction of those might have planets. Now figure how many of those planets can support life. Next, how many of them do support life, and so on. Follow this pattern far enough and eventually the formula tells us how many Frank Drakes there might be in the universe.

Whatever number is produced by the formula is essentially meaningless, for many of the equation’s factors are based on pure conjecture. But the general principle is sound: start with a large pool and whittle it down until you have the finalists.

If you think about it, variations of this formula can be created and applied to almost anything. Take, for example, the one hundred thousand people who audition for American Idol each year. A small fraction of those make it past the scouts. A small fraction of those make it past the producers. A small fraction of those actually make it in front of the judges. Another fraction goes to Hollywood, and so on. Eventually, you get down to the season finale where one person, usually Frank Drake, is declared the winner.

This ‘whittling theory’ applies to essentially any discipline. Musicians, actors, athletes, and, yes, even scientists: all of them form vast pyramids where one superstar is supported by an exponentially large number of wannabes at the base and those with varying degrees of talent in between. And it has to be that way. You simply cannot have 100,000 American Idol winners. By definition, there can’t be 100,000 Number One radio hits on the Billboard charts at once. You can’t have 100,000 J.K. Rowlings out there simultaneously, because that would mean a LOT of people buying 100,000 books all at once. Mathematically speaking, the universe is fundamentally designed to support the against-all-odds theorem.

Funny I should mention Rowling just there, since this meandering essay is now at last turning to the point at hand: becoming a successful writer. So in this spirit, I’d like to offer my own variation on the Drake Equation:

It breaks down something like this:

H = The number of humans on the planet capable of writing at all.
f_pf = The fraction of these who have even a passing fancy of writing a book.
f_i = The fraction of these who actually come up with an idea for a book.
f_s = The fraction of these who start writing a book.
f_fd = The fraction of these who by some miracle finish a first draft.
f_m = The fraction of these who complete a final manuscript.
f_a = The fraction of these who find an agent.
f_p1 = The fraction of these whose agents manage to find a willing publisher.
f_p2 = The fraction of these publishers who actually publish.
f_$ = The fraction of these who make any money on the book.
f_$$ = The fraction of these who actually make a living off writing.
f_$$$ = The fraction of these who make a really nice living off writing.

I’ve spent the past few hours playing with some numbers and have accurately concluded there’s about a one in 3.79 brazillion chance that I’ll end up anywhere in the f_$ range. Yet for some reason, I keep at it. Though my higher order brain functions understand it’s against all odds, one fact sticks in my head: no one has yet ever become a successful author by never writing anything. Or, as the state lottery puts it, “You can’t win if you don’t play.”

The current book project is, indeed, intended to be a series of books. When I first re-tooled the idea last summer, it looked like it would span five volumes. While writing the first draft and approaching what would have been the end of the first book, I realized the ending I had originally outlined was fairly lame. Okay, really lame. It would have been as if Tolkien decided to end The Fellowship of the Ring halfway during the Council of Elrond. Had by some miracle it been published, it would have received reviews from some extremely disappointed readers.

So I combined the first two storylines into one, then checked my original outline again. Hmmm… now the third book looked thoroughly pointless. Rejected. So how about the fourth and fifth? Hmmm… yeah, these really should be one book as well. And hey presto! just like that, I had a trilogy. I can live with that.

But after I (more or less) completed the first draft, I began the retooling phase. Writing with my head, as it were. Suddenly it started looking like an extra book might be needed after all. Which to the average person might not sound like a big deal, but causes me to channel the Knights Who Say Ni and declare, “There is one small problem!”

No, it’s not the lack of shrubbery. It’s the fact that four books is an even number. And I just can’t have that. I can’t tell you why, but it’s wrong. Two is bad. Four is bad. Six is bad. Forget the content: I just can’t deal with having an even number of books in a series. One is an awesome number. Three, of course, is absolute magic. Five is like three, but on steroids. Seven is how many years you go to Hogwarts. But four? Uck. Me no like.

If I had to put my finger on it, I believe it comes down to this: there’s no “middle” point. It somehow feels unbalanced. Kind of like when the solar system went from nine planets to eight. It just ain’t right.

Is it just me? Anyone else feel like this?

So I guess I’m going to try and stretch this to five books again. But if someday this whole thing gets published and you notice the middle book is triple spaced with two inch margins, at least you’ll be able to point back to this post for the explanation.