Dear Extra Squeeze Team: How do I get critiques on my WIP but prevent plagiarism?

Dear Extra Squeeze Team: How do I get critiques on my WIP but prevent plagiarism?

Rebecca Forster

USA Today Bestselling author of 35 books, including the Witness series and the new Finn O’Brien series.

In my 30+ year career, I have never worried about plagiarism. Most working authors don’t need to plagiarize your work, they have plenty of their own to worry about. New authors have their own ideas and probably will think they are on a better track with their own ideas. Keep your nose to the grindstone, listen to solid critiques and move forward.

Jenny Jensen

Developmental editor who has worked for twenty plus years with new and established authors of both fiction and non-fiction, traditional and indie.

Jenny is still on vacation time. She be back next month with The Extra Squeeze Team.

Robin Blakely

PR/Business Development coach for writers and artists; CEO, Creative Center of America; member, Forbes Coaches Council.

It is never wrong to take precautions with your work. My best suggestion for preventing plagiarism at the critique stage of the writing process is simple. Don’t share your work with people who have not been vetted in some way to earn your trust. If you doubt the integrity of the people that you are sharing your material with, their opinions about your writing should also be in question. If you have any qualms that your ideas could be stolen by the circle of people you willingly handed your work over to, then tighten your circle. Your work is your business. In any business, great ideas can be at risk of idea theft. Copyrights, trademarks, and non-disclosure agreements all exist to help enforce your rights. Look into those options. But realize that in the critique stage, prevention is a more powerful tool than policing the issue after it happens.

And, on the flip side, protect yourself. Accusations of idea theft or plagiarism is a two-way street. In a critique group, it is important to understand the parameters of collaboration. You may be asking other people to give you their opinions and contribute their ideas to your unfinished piece, but that also has limits that need to be established and clearly understood. It is possible that in a critique setting, your work may be the catalyst for a bigger and better idea than you imagined. If that bigger and better idea comes to light and is identified by someone, it is important to know how to properly handle that situation. It all starts with trusting who is at the table and taking the time to establish and understand the game rules before any of your work is read by anyone.

H.O. Charles

Cover designer and author of the fantasy series, The Fireblade Array

This genuinely is worth considering as ideas get stolen all the time (paranoid, me??). Sometimes plagiarism is not even committed consciously by the perpetrator. We absorb sentences and word structures and ideas all the time as we move through life, so it’s inevitable that we will reproduce bits and pieces of these when we get creative. If you’re sharing your work with a fellow creative, it should be accepted that you are going to influence them at least a little bit. If they churn out whole chunks of an original work or copy an entire plot without acknowledgement, it is quite different.

First, I’d advise using only people you trust to do your first run of read-throughs and critiques. If they’re your friends, they might not be as tough on your work, slightly biased etc., but it’s better than nothing at all. After that, there are copyright registration places if you live in the UK, but they are pointless in my opinion (we do not have a copyright office here – the US does). They won’t act for you legally if someone steals your work, and will take a small fee to register a copy of your work on the date you submit it. But if you have the raw, dated file stored on your computer, then you can just as easily prove you are the owner of the original work anyway. The law is different between the UK and USA, and elsewhere, so it is worth looking into copyright before you share your work with anyone.

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June Featured Author: Denise M. Colby

June 29, 2019 by Denise M. Colby in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as Christian Historical Fiction, Denise M Colby, Marketing, Social Media, writing

Denise Colby |The Writing Journey

Denise M. Colby loves to write words that encourage, enrich, and engage whether it’s in her blog, social media, magazine articles, or devotions. With over 20+ years’ experience in marketing, she enjoys using her skills to help other authors. She treasures the written word and the messages that can be conveyed when certain words are strung together. An avid journal writer, she usually can be found with a pen and notepad whenever she’s reading God’s word. Denise is writing her first novel, a Christian Historical Romance and can be found at www.denisemcolby.com

She’s a member of RWA, OCC/RWA, Faith, Hope & Love Chapter of RWA, ACFW (where she is a semi-finalist in the Genesis contest Historical Romance Category), OC Chapter of ACFW, and SoCal Christian Writers’ Conference (where she will be teaching two workshops in June – Brand and SEO Marketing for Your Website).

In addition to Denise’s column The Writing Journey on A Slice of Orange, you can read some of her magazine article here.

Denise M. Colby’s Books

SHORT and SWEET’S FAMILY ALBUM

THE SHORT & SWEET OF IT: When the Right Word Is a Short Word

WHEN PLANS GO AWRY

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Quarter Days: Queen Victoria, Mangoes, and Book vs. Film

June 28, 2019 by Alina K. Field in category Quarter Days by Alina K. Field

Greetings and happy summer!

A few ideas popped up for this post, but since I write historical fiction, I decided to honor Midsummer by talking about Queen Victoria, with a passing mention of mangoes.

June 28^,2019, is the 181^st anniversary of the coronation of the nineteen-year-old Queen Victoria. Her stable and fecund marriage and her famous stodginess has branded the looooong years of her reign in the same way the post-World War II 1950s are remembered as Ozzie and Harriet-land.

For someone so stuffy and boring, Victoria has managed to stir up a lot of twentieth and twenty-first century publicity. The movie Mrs. Brown depicted her long and intimate friendship with Scottish servant, John Brown; The Young Victoria covered her early life, marriage and court intrigues; and of course, there’s the PBS mini-series about her which just finished its second season.

Her most recent depiction in film is Victoria and Abdul. The movie features the “Munshi-mania” surrounding her close friendship with another much younger and much more-foreign-than-a-Scotsman male servant. Abdul Karim, a Muslim Indian from Agra, became her teacher, or “Munshi”.

Back to our June fruit

Last year Victoria’s name popped up when the Wall Street Journal featured an article by novelist Chandrahas Choudhury about the 1663 varieties of Indian mangoes. Persuaded by her Munshi’s praise of the “Queen of Fruit”, Queen Victoria ordered her household to import mangoes from India. They were, predictably, “off” because of the fruit’s short shelf life.

I personally don’t like mangoes, but Choudhury has an explanation for that:

Whichever god brought forth the mango, she did so as a project that would frustrate imperial desires in the 19^th century and defeat even the global supply system of capitalism in the 21^st. That’s why almost all the mangoes in American markets are the fine-looking but bland, fibrous pretenders from Florida, Brazil or Mexico, not the storied ones of India.

Someday maybe I’ll get to visit India and sample a true Queen of Fruit.

Victoria and Abdul

Motivated by the mango story, I watched the movie Victoria and Abdul and started the book on which the movie is based. Shrabani Basu’s book is a beautifully written work of nonfiction. She delves into the patronage culture of Victoria’s court and British colonialism to tell the story about the deep friendship between the Queen and Karim.

When the elderly Queen Victoria is smitten by young Karim, the court is appalled at their growing friendship and the gifts she showers on him as he tutors her in Urdu and Indian culture.

What was the Queen’s motivation? Basu has this to say:

What her family could not comprehend was that the Queen was a born romantic…The death of her beloved husband had left her lonely and heartbroken…It fell to John Brown to draw her out of her self-imposed isolation, and the Queen soon leaned strongly on him. Brown was devoted to her and she could talk freely to him…His death once again robbed her of a companion.

When the Munshi arrived…his presence lifted her spirits…The Queen sensed a certain depth in Karim and found she could talk to him comfortably despite the language barriers. Karim brought her closer to India, the country that she had always longed to visit.

Is true friendship and loyalty possible between a powerful older woman and a younger man? Why would Karim leave the warmth of India for the cold and hostile British Court?

In the film, an Indian servant tells the British courtiers that Karim was toadying for favors like everyone else there. Otherwise, the filmmakers depict a close friendship between the Queen and her Munshi. Based on her research, Basu believes Karim’s regard for the Queen was genuine.

Book vs. Film

“All history is written by the victors,” and worthy of questioning. This is especially true of films which are crafted to make sure tickets sell and the audience doesn’t fall asleep. Setting, costume, and language bring a story to life, but filmmakers pick and choose what to include, what to omit, and what to make up to hit all the plot points and story arcs.

The Victoria and Abdul filmmakers did a good job, but they were honest about their craft. The opening credits include this statement:

Based on real events mostly

My vote: if you want the full story, the book is always better. What do you think?

If you’ve read this far, thank you for indulging my historical nerdiness. Happy Summer!

All images are from Wikimedia Commons except for the mangoes which are from depositphotos.com

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Aware by Neetu

June 26, 2019 by Neetu Malik in category Poet's Day by Neetu Malik tagged as Neetu Malik, Poet's Day, poetry, sand, tide, waves. quiet

Aware

I carve words in the sand

I know the tide will rise

and wash them away

but I write them
until my hands are gritty
and the color of sand

I speak to the waves

I know they don’t hear
but I let the words roll out
of my mouth anyway
until they sound

like the waves

I listen to the wind

even when it is still

I can hear silence in the quiet

it utters words I wouldn’t
otherwise hear—they come
from within

First published in TAT Poetry, December 2016

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Veronica Jorge Reviews: #PleaseSayYes A Novel by Tari Lynn Jewett

June 22, 2019 by Veronica Jorge in category Book Reviews by Veronica Jorge, Write From the Heart by Veronica Jorge tagged as #PleaseSayYes, romance, romantic comedy, Social Media, sweet romance, Tari Lynn Jewett

#PleaseSayYes

Tari Lynn Jewett

ISBN 978 173 3594318

Review:

Life can get complicated, but it helps when you have good friends, especially the kind who know what you need before you do, and who set out to help you even when you think you don’t need it. Confusion? Oh, yeah! Ticked off? Maybe a little.

Still brooding over her breakup last year, Lucy Vaughn settles in to her day job as an elementary school teacher. Evenings, she curls up with a Victorian romance novel. Life is peaceful, but lonely, until her friends and social media take over her life.

Lucy has a secret admirer who’s too shy to ask her out. So his brother decides to help things along to connect him with Lucy. He posts an anonymous invitation as a secret admirer asking Lucy to be his date for Valentine’s. Each day, he adds to the post giving hints as to his identity.

Lucy and her best friend Ashley sort through the clues: local guy, owns his own business, and he’s a musician. Then they compile a list of possibilities. Could it be the guy she met at the New Year’s Party? The techie from the school field trip? Her new neighbor?

Or maybe it’s the man Lucy least expects. He’s closer than she thinks. In fact, he has no idea that his brother has set this event in motion.

The social media posts, like true love, spiral out of control and go viral. Soon the whole world is commenting and urging Lucy to, “Please say yes!”

Got friends? On social media? Prepare yourself. You just might be the next Lucy Vaughn.

So while you’re waiting for your friends to take over your life, for your good of course, read Tari Lynn Jewett’s, #PleaseSayYes. It will make you laugh and warm your heart.

See you next time on July 22^nd.