Divine Appointments

If you've been around writers who are also people of faith, you may have heard this term "divine appointments."

People use it to describe encounters that happen at conferences (or anywhere else) that are not planned or expected, but end up being much better for you than any of your own plans. (The secular word for this phenomenon is serendipity, which strikes me as a boring, cop-out word for several reasons. But I digress.)

Halfway through the first day of this two-day conference, I found myself thinking: "Hey, nothing's really happening here. No workshop is lighting my fire this year, and I have all my curriculum planned. Why am I here?"

The question "Why am I here?" is very powerful, and I should ask it regularly! It doesn't go unanswered.

A week before, I had volunteered to introduce a couple of workshops in response to a request for help from the convention organizers. I told them they could just sign me up for any workshop that still needed an introductory speaker. They assigned me to two sessions.

The first workshop they assigned me is one I never would have chosen to attend if left to my own devices. The subject sounded interesting, but the description made it clear that it was primarily aimed at parents of midddle- and high-school students. My daughter is only seven.

Enter the divine appointment.

Attending that workshop clarified my vision of how I want to parent. It was transformative. It illuminated my murky thinking and helped me understand how I would like to guide my child and even how to imagine the shape of my life, as a whole.

But that's not all.

On the second day, I went back for a second workshop by these same presenters.

During that workshop, something they said made me realize that I also might be in a position to help them with a challenge.

Divine appointments rock.

So what does this have to do with writing and my life as a newly-contracted author?

Well, throughout this past week, the wonderful people at Thomas Nelson have been praying for me. My editor told me they pray for all their authors by name, week by week. I was very moved by this revelation. They even asked me before the week began whether I had any concerns or prayer requests to share.

You know what I asked them to pray for?

My discernment.

I asked for clear sight.

Ask, and it shall be given to you.

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How about you? Anyone else had any divine appointments lately?

But Is It Stealing? Critique Groups and Plagiarism

Some time ago, I experienced something in a critique group that made me uneasy. It wasn't plagiarism, which I will define as the use of one author's words or ideas by another author without credit. Instead, it was a "copycat" violation of what I consider to be critique group etiquette. (Current critique partners, do not fear! None of you are involved.) This will take a few paragraphs to explain, so bear with me.

In NONfiction, plagiarism is usually easy to identify. Either you have used someone else's uncredited words or ideas, or you haven't. When I was teaching college composition, it was very easy to spot plagiarism, because none of my undergrads could write like professional literary critics. When words like "trope" and "representational" appeared in their papers, the alarm went off. Fortunately, that only happened twice.

In fiction, by contrast, the definition of plagiarism is hazy. Shakespeare's rivals denigrated him as a plagiarist, calling him "the upstart crow who has beautified himself with our feathers." Almost all writers admit that basic plots function along similar lines in many stories. No one can copyright boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl again.

Still, the theft of entire passages from another author's novels is a pretty clearcut example of plagiarism.

I've read some novels in which authors closely copied a unique idea from another author's novel. To me, that kind of work constitutes a kind of plagiarism. I wouldn't do it myself, because professional self-respect dictates against it, but I still don't label those imitative writers as "plagiarists." I allow for the fact that other writers draw their plagiarism lines in different places. Mine happen to be very strict. (I have to admit that if someone imitated my high-concept plot in this way, I would get pretty hot under the collar, but I would also realize that current intellectual property law does not defend against this kind of thing. Stefanie Meyer cannot complain about the current scads of teenaged vampire novels, nor can Anne McCaffrey sue for the many ripoffs of her telepathic dragons and their riders. That issue exists only between a copycat writer and her own conscience.)

Here are some examples of how I draw those lines:

ACCEPTABLE LEARNING FROM ANOTHER WRITER:
Writer A sees that her partner, Writer B, has used a description of trees to set a mood in a chapter. Writer A uses a different description of trees to set a mood in her own chapter. That is A-OK.

PLAGIARISM:
Writer A sees that Writer B has used a specific phrase (of three words or more)to create an effect. Writer B uses that exact phrase of three words or more in a very similar situation to create a similar effect. That is not OK. Now there may be isolated cases when this imitation occurs unconsciously, with two or three words, and an author shouldn't be oversensitive to those instances when another writer inadvertently "echoes" her work. But deliberate use of another author's words is not ethical, at least in my opinion.

BORDERLINE, perhaps STEPPING ON TOES, but not plagiarism:
A partner begins to use vocabulary words that she likes from her partner's work, unusual words that clearly come from that partner's authorial voice rather than her own. I don't mean single words like "unlined," or "flushed," which are very common in the work of many authors. Instead, I mean situations like this: Writer A uses the word "macabre" in a scene, and "ululating" in another, and the following week her partner, Writer B, uses those same two unusual words in her manuscript. (This particular example is only going to happen if your critique partner is Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft.)

I know some of us may have different comfort zones. I had this discussion with a current critique partner the other day and was happy to discover that we have similarly strict standards when it comes to copycatting. But not everyone feels the same.

What do you think about imitation of a partner's language or techniques? Do you draw the line somewhere? Or does it not bother you? Is there a difference between imitating critique partners, and imitating the work of professionals whom you don't know personally? What about a difference between imitating a partner's authorial voice or imitating her ideas?

I realize this is controversial. (I wish I had a scary font for that word.) So be brave, and speak your mind, with the understanding that friendly and civil difference of opinion is welcome here.

A First

This is not the first time I have ever made money from my writing.

I won $750 in a short story contest, some years back.

I won another prize for my doctoral dissertation, and that prize came with a monetary award (interestingly, also $750).

But this is the first time I have been PAID for my work, as opposed to winning a prize for it.

I've obscured most of this check, for discretion's sake, but I hope you might still be able to share the exciting but surreal experience of opening an envelope and finding a check from a major publisher, made out to (insert your name here).

By the way, though I am contractually-obliged not to release the details of my book deal, I will let the cat out of the bag and tell you that the dollar figure on that check is less than one million dollars. :-)

Tightrope

Last week, I officially submitted my first manuscript to my editor at Thomas Nelson.

She has already seen the manuscript, of course, because the editorial staff read it in order to decide whether to buy it.

Nonetheless, every manuscript in my contract has a submission date, and so I had a few weeks to give my first novel another quick edit before I hit "send."

Now I'm waiting for my first editorial letter, which will contain my editor's initial feedback and suggestions.

While I wait, I'm working on a major rewrite of the second novel in the series, which I actually wrote BEFORE the first novel.

When I say "the first novel," it's a little confusing even for my critique partners to remember which novel we're discussing. Do we mean the first one I wrote, or the first one in the series, which is the second one I wrote?

For the sake of clarity, I guess I can call one the 1825 novel, and the other the 1855 novel.

I just submitted the 1825 novel.

I'm currently rewriting the 1855 novel. This is a serious rewrite.

A major edit like this one often feels like walking a tightrope.

Every writer must find the balance between an exciting, realistic plot, and a melodramatic mess.

I just escalated a problem in the fourth chapter of my 1855 novel. In general, increasing conflict is good. But critique partners help a writer to determine the exact point at which the conflict becomes too big or too tiring for a reader.

If the stakes are too low and the situation too ordinary, the novel may just slip down into that crack of doom between the bed and the wall, and the reader will never miss it. But if every chapter is hard on the nerves, the story may become annoying, and that means it's trash can time!

A novel must lure the reader into its fictional world, not bludgeon her over the head and haul her around by the hair.

In addition to changing the story, I'm eliminating a major, major character in this 1855 novel. I expect a gasp from my partner Lorena when I tell her this character is gone. :-) But writing the 1825 novel changed the 1855 novel, as if I traveled backwards in a time machine and rearranged history. It's a very odd experience to write novels out of chronological order. In the future, I'll try to stick to a straightforward timeline!

I can't wait to hear what my writer-pals say about the changes. They've never yet been wrong about issues of balance and realism.

How do you decide when enough is enough? Do you tend to overwrite plot and have to tone things down, or underwrite and have to pump things up?