It started with the Kaavya Viswanathan thing. It got worse more recently with the Cassie Edwards thing at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books (and props to Sarah for pointing me to this bitingly sarcastic Newsweek article).
These plagiarizing chicks give me the creeps. Cassie Edwards is seriously giving me nightmares.
I don’t know why it even worries me. I never knowingly try and copy anything from anyone, I didn’t even do it in school (although untold millions copied from me. Yes. I was the Original Wuss Girl). I’m totally above board, and I know it. But I’m completely in a panic when I hear people caught copying saying it was “accidental,” and it was “unconscious.” Writing about WWII means I’m not writing in a vacuum; everybody and his dog has something to say about “the Just War” and “the most violent war in Mankind’s History.” What if I say something someone else has already said? What if my unconscious walks into someone else’s novel and goes shopping?
Today I worked on my acknowledgments for Novel #2, just to settle my nerves. They’re an entire page long so far, as I sought to list every book, website, magazine article, movie, photograph from the National Archives; anything that could have sparked my creativity. I almost feel like I’m trying to say, “No, it wasn’t me, it was the genius of the world that wrote this book!” But seriously: at this point, anything to stop the nightmares.
Geez. If my editor knew how much I get worked up over stuff like this, she would WORRY. Revision makes me loony. Deadline is Monday next; will be glad when this first bout is over…
Ooh, nice.
Ooh, nice.
Ooh, nice.
Like I said, you’ll be fine…at least you HAVE acknowledgments!
And I was Wuss Girl, too, sadly. One guy who I “helped with his homework” ended up getting into Harvard. That still irks me.
Like I said, you’ll be fine…at least you HAVE acknowledgments! And I was Wuss Girl, too, sadly. One guy who I “helped with his homework” ended up getting into Harvard. That still irks me.
Like I said, you’ll be fine…at least you HAVE acknowledgments!
And I was Wuss Girl, too, sadly. One guy who I “helped with his homework” ended up getting into Harvard. That still irks me.