The Shia LeBeouf plagiarism scandal has gone completely off the rails. He has now been caught stealing content from multiple authors and even from multiple apologies.
I feel I should comment on this, because no one seems to be getting to the ultimate cause of this and other plagiarism scandals in literature, science, and politics. The disease behind these symptoms is the polite Western myth that we are all creative equals, a myth which manifests in a variety of forms. Continue reading
Recently, a writer friend of mine (let’s call this person T) sent me a link to a story at The Onion shredding the pretensions of a bad writer who has no idea he’s a bad writer, called “Novelist Has Whole Shitty World Plotted Out.”
Explaining the link, T had added a simple message: “God, this makes me self-conscious as hell.”
There is no reason to be self-conscious, because T is one of the best writers I know, published or not, and one of the few writers whose voice moves me to envy. Reading Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
At the same time, another friend of mine asked me to read a story written by an acquaintance, whom we will call C. C has been writing for years, is well-educated, and well-versed in all the Do’s & Don’ts of writery. Yet, lurking in the first paragraph were half a dozen cringe-worthy mistakes that any decent writer should know to avoid. As I read on, it didn’t get better, so I reluctantly told my friend that I thought the story was quite awful.
We were each relieved to find the other in agreement.
Yet, while T is hesitant despite natural talent, C is determined and confident all out of proportion to reality. I had stumbled onto a perfect case study in the contrast between over-confident yet lousy writers and talented yet self-doubting writers, demonstrating the perverse influence the “Dunning-Kruger Effect” has on literature, a problem I have discussed before.
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Oh, we have a big ol’ bunch o’ literary agent links this week, my friends.
FYI: Jessica at BookEnds will not consider representing you for an up-front payment in lieu of or in addition to a commission, and she probably won’t click a link to a video query, but she will answer a lot of questions about submitting a partial.
At Dystel & Goderich, Jane explains how the submission process works, Miriam throws in her two cents about thrillers, and Jessica dismisses a few misconceptions about publishing.
Nathan Bransford dives into hard-sell query letter subject lines, answers ten questions about self-publishing, and points out the literary impact of one of my favorite cognitive biases: the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Janet Reid reminds us to be careful with queries and death threats, while Nathan Henrion wonders if fiction writers can mimic musical artists.
Finally, the Rejectionist discusses recent demonic rejections, while Rachelle Gardner discusses freelance editors and how long the process takes from submission to hitting the shelves.
