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I have been a little uncomfortable with the debate on "ownership" of stories. The theory is fine. An author owns their story and the rights to deal with that story as they see fit.
Dead easy, right?
But then you get to the somewhat more messy realities. A week or so ago I was trying to post a story and I was having Hell's own difficulties with formatting; can't blame anybody. It was me that was stuffing it up. Eventually I posted it. I took one look and (shock! horror!) deleted it. My pride wouldn't allow me to leave it there.
In the brief time it was up Puddintane read it and PMed me that she liked it but I was obviously having some problems and could she help. It being 2 a.m. my time I had given up and didn't see her message until next morning. Anyway I got back to her and said I was going to have another go in the evening, and we'd see how I went.
So I did have another go and much more successfully, but I couldn't get the italics to switch off in one part, so I PMed Puddin' and said "Help" and she fixed the problem in a flash and gave me a primer in what I'd done wrong.
Now, on the way to posting I'd asked Kristina L.S. to critique it, which she did and made some suggestions for improvements, most of which I incorporated in whole or in part before I posted.
After posting, I got quite a few comments, and in PM conversations with several of the commentors I got helpful hints on what I had written and what I could maybe do to improve what I had done, which I have carefully stored away for future use (and in a couple of cases tweaked in already).
Now we come to the hairy part. If I ever decided to pull that piece for some mythical profitable publishing (har! har!) do I not have a responsibility to all those lovely people who helped to make my story a success without any thought of reward?
How do I value the suggestions that made me, hopefully, a better writer? How do I repay the little lessons in how to post my stories (not the first time I might add)?
How do I apologise to the kind commentors when I delete their comments with my story?
How do I repay Erin for providing me with a platform with which to inflict my minuscule talent on the audience here?
I don't know the answers to these questions and I suggest that those who are waxing all dogmatic about their "rights" take a good long look at themselves, and let me say I am posting this blog deliberately away from the existing ones in order to avoid a "flame war".
Yes, there are some great authors here, but they do not spring full-blown from burning bushes. They get lots of help along the way,
Joanne
Comments
Hopefully we are not that mercenary?
I have realized that I am not going to be a commercially viable author, so your problem will never be mine. I write for me. It is a sort of journaling where I work out some feelings.
I'd say most of us are here as some form of social outlet. And actually, there are Authors here who do write commercially, but in another genre. When it comes to the point that you are making money doing this, then I think that you'd want an attorney to help you work this out, though, he'd probably take more than anyone here would want.
So, perhaps a simple thank you to those who helped you would be sufficient?
Much Peace
Gwen
The custom
is to mention it as a foreword or even acknowledgements afterwards.
Earning a living from writing is probably as hard as being the next big thing in acting. It takes luck and perseverance, not just talent - some of those who do make fortunes don't write that well, and some very talented writers have never been published.
I'm grateful to people like Erin, who gives her time and resources to would be writers like me, for somewhere to indulge our compulsions and share them with others, when she could be using her remarkable writing skills to publish her own work for profit.
Angharad
Angharad
Hi Joanne...
We thank them by telling them. We blog and in a blog we thank them all for their help. We blog and thank individuals, we blog and share a bit of ourselves with them, the reason(s) we write. Every little thing is important and more important than the bigger things after all.
We comment on their stories and offer the help we have received. We thank them by helping others write as well. We thank everyone by becoming better at writing our stories.
Every author I have know has thanked those that helped them in more ways than one.
The thank yous are many here at the Big Closet, more so than on any other site out there!
I lament the loss of the comments left by others when a story is pulled, withdrawn or deleted. Those were filled with thank yous and much, much more!
Is saying thank you enough? Not for me it isn't, I have to give back! I like to help and encourage Newbies just as Erin, Jezzi, Aardvark, and the list goes on and on helped me when I was a Newbie.
The bottom line is "What is lost is lost" but we can try and prevent other losses by blogging the way we feel about certain issues.
Do you think without the blogs and comments left for them that Persephone would have made the offer that she did? I doubt it!
Without the blogs and the comments left for them concerning things that are heartfelt by our community there would never be progress or solutions!
I don't believe we are the waxing dogmatic folks worried about our rights you think we are Joanne. We are not dreamers either we are seeking solutions to heartfelt problems and in so doing bringing up further issues that go right along with the main issue.
That is how things are accomplished Joanne. Without discussion there can be no solution.
Joanne, most of us do thank everyone that have and are helping us everyday. We do this in many ways, just look around and see!
Huggles Joanne
Angel
"Be Your-Self, So Easy to Say, So Hard to Live!"
"Be Your-Self, So Easy to Say, So Hard to Live!"
Tennessee Williams
Through strange coincidence, the character of Blanche DuBois, who spoke that line in A Street Car Named Desire, was originally conceived of as a transvestite and effeminate gay man, the notion of being "transgendered" having been non-existent at the time. To be fair, some critics claim that she was instead a disguised incarnation of his sister Rose, a schizophrenic who was lobotomised at the insistence of his mother, and required constant institutional care thereafter. Blanche was changed (sex-changed?) into a genetic female for commercial reasons, since a more-or-less sympathetic treatment of what we now think of as GLBT people was "impossible" at the time.
Mr Williams was a gay man, which wasn't exactly a secret, but neither was he "out and proud" at the time. He had a dreadful horror of drifting into insanity, like his sister, and "self-medicated" using both legal and illegal drugs, which quite likely caused his death, although the official report was choking on the cap of a bottle of medicine.
It should be noted that lobotomy was also used to "cure" homosexuality at the time, since homosexuality was still classified as a mental disorder, so Mr Williams' fears were perfectly legitimate.
The Gay Holocaust
Treatment of Psychosexual Disorders By Dr. Carl J. Weber
Read it. It's long, but instructive, and not that long ago. Lesbians and Gay men were still being lobotomised and/or tortured with electroshock "therapies" in the USA more than a decade after my own age of majority, and falling into the hands of the psychiatric system was a very real fear for many of my peers. Lobotomy is still legal in the USA as a whole, although several states have passed laws against it, and it's very rare these days.
Cheers,
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style