Meredith Shayne

Writing and other stuff.

This morning, I was 3,000 words behind where I wanted to be in the current thing I’m writing, and now I’m not. I even managed to get all of it done before NCIS, which was even better.

The current thing I’m writing needs to be at least 20,000 words for me to submit it where I want to submit it. This morning I thought it wasn’t going to make it, but now I think it will, which is good since I dislike useless padding intensely. Also, the stuff I wrote on Thursday night is absolutely shithouse and needs to be deleted, but I want to finish the thing first before I go deleting anything. It’s at 14,200 words now, and there’s quite a lot that needs going into the back end, so that should be fine. Plus, I’ve been skipping around writing the scenes which take my fancy in order to just get stuff done (I’ve come to realise that if I force myself to write a scene I’m finding difficult first before writing anything else that comes after it, all I’ll do is brood over it and not write a thing. At least if I skip around, I’m writing something and not nothing), and I’m realising there’s some stuff going into the back end that really needs foreshadowing before then, so that will have to go in, and there’s also half finished scenes all over the place which I’ve just highlighted so I know I have to go back to them (I do this at work too. That way when I’ve left something until last and then forgotten I have to do it – which I always do – I see it when I’m scrolling through the document one last time before I send it off I see it, and think, “What’s that highlight…OH. BUGGER.” and can do it. Saves sending something off and then having to email back with the right version, haha).

So. Long story short – should make 20,000 fairly easily. Excellent.

Speaking of writing, the Care and Feeding of Demons anthology has gotten a five-star review at Rainbow Reviews! How weird and exciting that is. The lovely reviewer called Reasonable Force ‘stylish’, a description which thrills me to no end. I will hug it and love it and call it George.

In other, more disconcerting news, here is a story demonstrating how someone can write exactly the same story as somebody else, completely by accident. The most horrifying part was probably this part:

I spend the rest of the day (that would be two weeks ago last Monday), reading and doing a cross story analysis. And I came up with one very definitive truth – I could not write the book I’d been writing.

Similarity included: the triggering event, the fact that this event happened around 20 years in the past, the villain, deaths of old friends, and, of course, the location. I’m just being general here. Trust me, the core elements of the stories were very similar.

Granted, the way I was telling the story, and the way the other author told their story were different, but it didn’t hid the fact that there was too much the same.

How awful. And what are the chances, god. But still, it can happen, and this is why in cases where someone is accused of plagiarism – where the accusation is a similarity of events rather than a wholesale copying of text – I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt until there’s actual proof of wholesale copying. They do say that there are no new ideas under the sun, after all.

Anyway, that’s enough for now. Bed is calling, because it’s work tomorrow, woe. Monday comes around with such monotonous regularity. If only the weekend came around so quickly and lingered so long.

Crossposted to all my journals today, because I’m lazy and want to go to sleep. Apologies to those who see this multiple times.