At 11:46 AM 4/26/2003 -0700, Lezlie wrote:
 >[My opening] [s]ounds a lot like something out of the book by Lousia 
Teish, "Jambalaya".

Oops!  I've never read that one, but it would be worth picking up at the 
bookstore or library just to be sure I'm not treading too close.  It can't 
be an exact quotation, has to be synergy and serendipity and (what was that 
word--ack, an attack of lethologica!) the Zeitgeist or whatever.  Still, it 
scares me.

* "Lethologica," the inability to recall a word on the tip of one's tongue!

Here's what I've always feared:  I read a website or a book one day and 
it's enchanting, and I fall asleep having read a goodly portion or through 
to the end.  I may even have a dream based on the situations, it was such a 
neat trick.  But in the morning I wake up late and rush to my errands and 
don't even think about the book again.  Several months or even years 
pass.  I'm typing on one of my creations.  It's time for a scene break and 
I ask myself, now what?  Where to?  My characters need to pop into another 
place and grow and stretch or solve the mystery with a clue or 
whatever.  Suddenly a scene materializes as an image like a jewel in my 
mind.  The storyline flows without effort as a gorgeous paragraph flows out 
of my fingers.  The Muse is singing!  Hooray!

Okay, I finish and sell the book (obviously this IS a fantasy, isn't 
it?!?!) to New York.  I read the first advance review and we get a call 
from a lawyer.  "You copied three paragraphs and a situation out of I. P. 
Frehley's _Yellow River_, published by Bantam in 1987.  Our lawyers will 
get with your publisher's lawyers."

EEK!  Seize up!  Deep breaths.  Finally the red miasma passes and I can see 
well enough again to struggle to the bookshelf.  Did we keep that one?  Did 
it get lent out or lost in a move?  NO, here it is . . . and there is my 
gorgeous paragraph, verbatim, the prologue of this novel.

Now what?!?!?!?!

See, how could you prevent that? I know this can happen because one time 
when I was studying for an English exam I memorized (inadvertently) a 
couple of paragraphs out of the review sheet and later regurgitated them 
practically verbatim again on the final exam at the end of the year.  I 
discovered this when I was sorting through the papers to see what I'd keep 
as "what I got out of the class."

Okay, that's extreme as imagined by the Worry Queen.  Still, what if you 
duplicated a metaphor someone else has used, or came up with the same 
phrase?  It must happen all the time.  No one's sued over it . . . yet.

Chewing on that a while.  I think this was a good dive-in point for the 
book, still, because it's flowing.  Part of this is that I'm getting to do 
it in first person (it's not a ME first person, but the character first 
person--imagine a Stanislavski method actress.)  I'm a little daunted by 
the present tense form, but I'm going to go back and make it all 
present.  That's what RDI books seem to be.

Interesting that the trend came from Britain (Bridget Jones' Diary and 
others.)  So did the Potter books.  And many other trends we glom on 
to.  We're kind of like the Japanese are with American technology . . . 
when we see the British doing a certain new kind of book, we can't get 
enough of it and start to clone it!

- - -
The only thing that flies faster than an F-16 is your guardian angel
- - - -
Nine out of ten doctors recommend reading my books.  The tenth is a quack.
Shalanna Collins   http://home.attbi.com/~shalanna/>
_Dulcinea: or Wizardry A-Flute_  (e-mail me 4 excerpt)  ISBN 0-7388-5388-7
New!  I'm trying out a blog/jrnl http://www.livejournal.com/users/shalanna/>

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