I agree. I partly feel sorry that this girl has gotten trapped between two huge publishing houses, but yet, I do find myself questioning if she thought she had an original story, or, if she was just "paying homage" to two of her favorite authors. She did appologize at the start and did say that she had thought she was writing an original story. Now, she doesn't respond to any questions, which, frankly, I can't blame her...
I haven't posted anything about it because I often look at literature somewhat like music. Eventually, you're going to play the same notes as someone else in an "original song". It's more the art of concealing your sources...I think authors have always "borrowed" from each other, and there's nothing really wrong with that. It's more reliant on your actual skills of not getting caught. ;) The lines picked out of her book, while she did think to change them, are obviously stolen. The piece on the animal activist arguement was really blatant...
I wish I could find non-fiction that didn't read like a text book, and was accurate. I keep looking, but I can never find anything I won't have to read with a glass of water close at hand...
And I wish more people would simply write for the sake of writing. So many people seem bent on the angle of "if you write, it must be published." While I like to write, I hardly feel anything of mine is worth publishing. The one thing I did feel that way, I went through a vanity press, simply because some of it had been distributed on-line previously. Otherwise, I might have taken it to an actual publisher. Writing is a form of expression and unfortunately, like anything semi-ephemeral, it gets abused and used, which results in alot of badly written stories.
I often wonder if vanity presses are going to make it harder to discern the good literature from the bad. With no agents or editors (and some people *seriously* need editors, myself included!) I wonder if the quality is going to suffer, or if it is going to make those who are exceptional but can't afford agents even more so, or if they are simply going to get lost in the crowd because they lack the skills for proper self-promotion. There's no question that vanity presses are on the rise and I do think they will have an impact. I just wonder what kind and if it's going to be one that will help or hinder.
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Date: 2006-05-03 03:33 pm (UTC)I haven't posted anything about it because I often look at literature somewhat like music. Eventually, you're going to play the same notes as someone else in an "original song". It's more the art of concealing your sources...I think authors have always "borrowed" from each other, and there's nothing really wrong with that. It's more reliant on your actual skills of not getting caught. ;) The lines picked out of her book, while she did think to change them, are obviously stolen. The piece on the animal activist arguement was really blatant...
I wish I could find non-fiction that didn't read like a text book, and was accurate. I keep looking, but I can never find anything I won't have to read with a glass of water close at hand...
And I wish more people would simply write for the sake of writing. So many people seem bent on the angle of "if you write, it must be published." While I like to write, I hardly feel anything of mine is worth publishing. The one thing I did feel that way, I went through a vanity press, simply because some of it had been distributed on-line previously. Otherwise, I might have taken it to an actual publisher. Writing is a form of expression and unfortunately, like anything semi-ephemeral, it gets abused and used, which results in alot of badly written stories.
I often wonder if vanity presses are going to make it harder to discern the good literature from the bad. With no agents or editors (and some people *seriously* need editors, myself included!) I wonder if the quality is going to suffer, or if it is going to make those who are exceptional but can't afford agents even more so, or if they are simply going to get lost in the crowd because they lack the skills for proper self-promotion. There's no question that vanity presses are on the rise and I do think they will have an impact. I just wonder what kind and if it's going to be one that will help or hinder.