Category — writing

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

Ecclesiastes1:9-10 KJV

This quote has been on my mind this morning as I contemplate what constitutes plagiarism. My trusty Oxford English Reference Dictionary defines plagiarize as, “1 take and use (the thoughts, writings, inventions etc. of another person) as one’s own. 2 pass off the thoughts etc. of (another person) as one’s own.”

So, basically, intellectual theft – but what if you haven’t actually stolen anything and it only feels like you did? What if you’ve come up with a very, very similar idea – practically the same idea – independently?

Here’s what happened: several weeks ago, I wrote a scene in my first draft where my protagonist is learning to cross over from the human world into the world of the fae via a portal in one of BC’s provincial parks. I describe what the portal looks like, feels like, and even sounds like. The description I wrote has been floating around in my head for the better part of a year now and I was reasonably happy with what I wrote.

However, this morning I was finishing up the latest Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead Reckoning – I love this series, it’s such good fun to read – and I read a description of a portal to Faery that is, in some respects, nearly exactly like my own – so nearly exactly, in fact, that after reading it I had the uncomfortable feeling of having somehow stolen my description from Charlaine Harris.

Now, given that Dead Reckoning was released on May 3 (two days ago) and I didn’t purchase it until last night, or read the pertinent scene until 5:30 a.m. this morning – and that I have never met Charlaine Harris, never mind been part of her peer review group for upcoming Sookie Stackhouse novels – it’s an impossibility for either of us to have stolen the others idea about what a portal to Faery looks like.

So now I’m left wondering this:  if the ideas are nearly the same – and I’ve freely admitted here that they are – is it plagiarism if I keep my scene exactly the way it is, even knowing that Charlaine Harris beat me to the punch in publishing her idea first?

I want to say it isn’t plagiarism, because I know damn good and well that I didn’t steal her idea. I didn’t read it and think, “Oh, that’s so much better than my own idea of a portal made of Jello and glitter glue, guarded by armed squirrels – yoink!”.  And I certainly don’t own a time machine that would allow me to steal her unpublished work and burgle the bits about her portal to Faery. I wrote my scene in good faith thinking that it was my idea, and my idea alone.  But, now that I know it isn’t, I’m a little worried a future editor or agent will say, ‘Hey, I think Charlaine Harris already wrote this description, you two-bit hack.”

Yes, I could change it and save myself (and the readers of this blog) all my intellectual hand-wringing, but I don’t want to change what I wrote. I like what I wrote because it works for the scene – but is it plagiarism? Am I a thief now that I know how alike parts of the descriptions are?

Please, help me set my mind at ease one way or the other by leaving your take on this in the comments!

Fear.

What do you picture and feel when you see that word? Scenes from horror films? That creepy spot in your basement where the light never quite reaches? That cold feeling in the pit of your belly when you’re almost asleep, and awaken to hear something – or someone – moving in your kitchen?

I’m discovering that fear is very powerful and that there are many types. I have the usual complement of fears – growing old alone, not being loved, centipedes, poorly lit staircases, and car crashes – but I’ve discovered there are far more insidious fears, fears that paralyze you inside and stop you from doing the things you long to do.

I’ve wanted to write a book since I was a kid – a dream that was not much encouraged by anyone around me – and now that I’ve got the chance to do it, I am terrified of doing it wrong and being a disappointment. I fear failure.

I shouldn’t fear it – I’m no stranger to failure: math class, grade nine science, various romantic relationships, being a barista, PHP classes at UBC, baking cookies….the list goes on. I’ve failed at many things and managed to keep going. Those failures taught me some of my limitations as a person – and it took a long time to learn that it was OK to suck at something. No one is good at everything right?

Yet, the first draft of this book is going painfully slowly because I have been so determined that every page I write be polished. I have been determined to prove that the faith people seem to have in my abilities as a writer are warranted because I’ve done it right the first time. I’ve been making myself mental with this stupid view of things. I’ve been so obsessed with perfection and word count that I haven’t been having as much fun as I suspect I ought to be having. And, the bits that weren’t fun to write are the bits I do the most correction on because they are the least fun to read.

Coincidence? I think not.

I know logically that screwing up is part of learning, and that even if I were an absolute genius, I’d still need to revise and edit a first draft (and probably the next several drafts too). I know this, and yet there are days when I feel like I’m getting into a tank full of venomous spiders and snakes – one false move and I’m done for. I have sometimes been so paralyzed by the idea of throwing caution to the wind that  it’s a wonder I got any work done at all.

To combat that inner perfectionist, I’ve taken some excellent advice from my writing group and am just writing. No editing (no matter how badly the idea of leaving half-arsed prose uncorrected bothers me) – no going back over yesterday’s work, no fixing, tinkering, correcting, or improving of any kind. The first day of this – just before I got the horrible cold that put me out of commission for well over a week – I wrote 2000 words in a sitting and just typed until I was ready to stop. 2000 words of unedited, uncorrected writing in all its awfulness.

I took incredible pains with my first scene of the book. I re-wrote it so many times it was ridiculous, I fixed every niggling little error just like I thought I should – especially as I knew it would be going to a group of peers for criticism! I was sure that “just writing” would turn out badly and that Joe would come home to find me hyperventilating into a paper bag while correcting typos. But, strangely enough, I was actually happier writing the 2000 unedited words where I just bashed at the keyboard until I felt tired. I tried it again the last two days too – and I only felt stressed when I tried to write it right the first time. Otherwise I just kept going according to the outline – more or less anyway – and was happy as a clam.

Does it need work?

Oh, hell yes. From the quick glance I gave it, I can see spelling errors galore, grammar issues, a startling lack of proper detail and it reads  – to me anyway – like badly done fanfic of my own writing, but I was happy. I felt very satisfied and thought, “I can fix all the crappy bits later – no big deal.” My inner perfectionist just about had kittens at that thought, but I didn’t go back. I still haven’t read the stuff I wrote either. It’ll still be there later, holding the outline of my ideas until I can clean them up and present them properly.

How do you conquer those deep-rooted paralyzing fears? How do you keep moving forward in the face of self-imposed criticism and perfectionism? I’d love to hear I’m not the only one being a teeny bit neurotic!

I am writing a novel.

Just looking at those words makes me feel giddy, ridiculous and nervous, but I’m doing it – I’m putting down words that are creating a story, and one day I hope to see it published.

In order to make sure that I don’t publish some horrific piece of rubbish, I’ve banded together with two other writers – Nicole and Laura – so we can encourage each other and critique each others writing.  I find the encouragement to be really, really helpful, it’s nice to be cheered on and to cheer on others. I genuinely wish for their success because they are working hard for it and, perhaps selfishly, because I feel that if they are successful, then maybe I could be too.

Besides, meeting up with a couple of cool people to guzzle caffeine and eat slightly dried out scones is always a good time.

We met last night and among our other discussions, we talked about critiquing our own work and giving it out to others to critique.

I actually like having my work critiqued, I’m not so stupid as to think that whatever I write is brilliant the first time I set it down on paper. I would much rather have Nicole and Laura rip it to pieces -  where only the three of us can see the wreckage  – than, say, self-publish it and pull the literary equivalent of walking around with the back of my dress tucked into my pantyhose.  I like seeing comments that let me know when I’ve created a bump in the text that jolted my reader: typos, grammatical errors, tense issues, word-choice, plot holes, pacing, tension…all the things that when done right, should draw the reader in and give them an enjoyable escape from reality.

I think it’s a sign of professionalism to take criticism well – especially when it is offered constructively and not just a statement like, “I dunno, it just sucked.”

So, I’m OK with that part of critiquing. I’m not afraid to get rid of the sucky or boring bits in my writing either – if the majority of feedback says, “Ugh, awful!” then I kill it with a gleeful press of the Delete key. What bothers me most is my lack of self-assurance in sending it out in the first place. Let me explain.

Remember your first day of high school? I do.

I got up, I got dressed in what I hoped was an outfit that looked half-decent (it looked ridiculous actually, but such was fashion in the early 1990′s) and I felt very nervous and a little excited. What if I got lost? What if I wandered into the wrong class and got laughed at? What if I couldn’t find my locker, or worse, I did find it but couldn’t remember the combination? What if I tripped and fell in the cafeteria? What if I fell asleep in class and drooled on myself? What if I fell asleep in class and farted? Dear god, the horror!

I knew the what-ifs were going to bog down my whole day, so I focused on what I knew I could do. I made sure I wore deodorant and brushed my teeth thoroughly. I made a checklist of stuff I knew I’d need and then made sure I had it all. I tucked a couple of Tylenol into my pocket just in case. I reminded myself to not talk too much, and to watch and listen.

I got on the bus and made it to my new school without incident. But as I walked through the halls, searching for my homeroom, I was seized by the sudden and dreadful knowledge that I had forgotten to put on pants.

My first instinct was to grab at my own butt to find out, but I couldn’t do that because a) grabbing your own ass – clothed or not – on the first day of high school in a busy hallway would be social suicide and b) I was afraid to discover that I would only find underwear – and even more afraid to discover that I’d forgotten that too. But it felt breezy somehow, I was sure I felt a draft on my bare skin and therefore I was sure that I hadn’t remembered pants.

It would only be a matter of moments now before some kid, probably a popular one, noticed and pointed it out to everyone else. The next four years rolled out before me, a long four years of torture and misery. I would get nicknamed “Pants”, certain cretinous morons would assume I was easy, my yearbook write-ups would be so horrifying I would have to burn down the school just to rid the Year Book office of the evidence. I would have to hire a hit-man to take out everyone currently in the hallway. I would die old and alone and unloved by anyone. They would write, “Here lies ‘Pants’ McTavish – she died of shame” on my tombstone.

I wanted to look down and check, but I felt that I was being watched; they were waiting for me to discover my pantless state and then the teasing would begin. So I kept walking, I found my homeroom and slid into an unoccupied desk at the side of the room and quickly peeked downwards (under the guise of fussing a little with my backpack). And when I looked down, there they were, in all their cotton, slightly-baggy, army-green glory: pants.

That same, suddenly naked feeling happens to me now when I send out some writing for a good critiquing.I’m afraid that I’ve sent myself out without any pants. That my writing is missing something really, really crucial and that without it, my fellow writers will roll their eyes and write, ” D+ Needs work, see me after class.” on it, (mostly because there is not enough space on the page for all the derision and scorn they need to heap on it) – and it will be awful.

It never happens like that of course, the feedback I get is immensely helpful and honest (hurrah!) but still nice somehow, and Nicole and Laura are making me a better writer for offering it (and they offer it freely too! No sense of begrudging duty here!).

But when I hit the send button and know that my latest revised piece is heading through the InterTubes – I always have a little moment of panic and  think, “Did I remember pants today?