“Restricted Area” Short Stories by Jason D. Bryant AND Will Kosh’s Book Soundtrack

You all know how I <3 my Indie authors, especially the extra creative ones. Will Kosh, for example, just sent me a soundtrack he devised to accompany his novel, Little Winged One. How ingenious. His book just got bumped to the top of my digital stack because of it.

 

And then there’s my Twitter buddy and fellow The Walking Dead fanatic, Jason D. Bryant, who’s written a variety of stories on WorthyOfPublishing.com. One of his projects, entitled Restricted Area, is a collection of short stories inspired by his Twitter followers. A follower sends him a DM with a plot outline- it must fit within only one message- and then sends another with nothing but a number indicating the word count.

Of course I did it. Like, right away. And my plot outline was this: A zombie retains her memories and conscience after turning. She traps herself in her basement to avoid harming her boyfriend. Chaos erupts.

My word count was 1000, chosen mostly just because that seemed to be the going theme.

He entitled my story, The Craving, and did amazing things with it. (Read: CHECK IT OUT!) I think it’s a pretty original concept and I love Mr. Bryant’s enthusiasm for it. But I also love the idea because it demonstrates how involved a reader can be, and how writing is an interactive experience. The reader isn’t a spectator; you want your readers to be a part of your story. Mr. Bryant is taking that to a new level and allowing the reader to become the muse.

It was a good week to be a part of the writing community.

 

Writing with Integrity Pt. 2: Plagiarism & Libel (my rant for the weekend)

When I was in college, there was a huge emphasis on the consequences of plagiarism. And I don’t mean, “If you steal someone’s essay, you’ll get reported for cheating and you’ll fail the class.”

No. If you got caught plagiarizing, you were expelled. Period.

It didn’t matter if you claimed it was accidental. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t verbatim. If you took something and didn’t cite it properly, you were done.

I loved that.

When I was a teenager, I joined an online writing community where I posted my melodramatic poetry. It was always appearing in other places by people who’d steal it. It wasn’t even that good, but having it stolen made me feel vulnerable and outraged. I can’t imagine how much worse I would have felt had someone plagiarized an entire novel of mine. But the fact is that most unscrupulous people don’t plagiarize whole works. They steal little bits. They’re sneaky like that.

But little bits can matter a lot. If someone steals your character names and the basic premise of your story, that can really kill your original work. Even if the thief’s prose is original, the ideas are stolen.

As an editor, this drives me crazy. Receiving plagiarized submissions is utterly offensive to me. I’d like not to have to Google everyone’s stories. I’d like people, in general, to be more ethical. In short, I’d like to be able to expel people from the universal writing community if they’re caught plagiarizing.

Another problem is libel. As writers, we often base our stories off personal experiences and our characters off real people. But this isn’t acceptable when you purposely create a fictional character to perfectly mimic someone you despise so you can harm their reputation through your writing. Um, duh.

Are these really such fine lines? Is this not common sense?

Sometimes I have to wonder.

Social Media: The Expertly Positioned Distraction

In the old days, writers could lock themselves in a room with a typewriter and just get it done. Since the personal computer has become a commodity, this has become less doable. Even back when I waited ten minutes for my dial-up connection and I was typing on my less-than-sexy Macintosh, a little black-and-green ICQ text box would pop up and I could watch a stranger, usually from another country, as he or she typed something inappropriate (part of the fun of ICQ was watching as people corrected their typos.) This was, of course, before the phenomenon of America Online, which revolutionized online instant messaging.

Could the loyal users of AIM have predicted the concept and success (even if temporary) of social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other online communities? I remember thinking AIM was ingenious when I downloaded the upgrade that allowed me to change fonts and text colors. What would I have said to what we have now? It’s no wonder that social media has taken over the communicative world.

But there’s a downside (more than a few, actually.) One major one is that social media is everywhere. It’s on your laptop, your phone, your tablet… It’s advertised on the radio and on TV. Twitter usernames are even glaring at you from the face of traditional business cards. And amid all of this chaos are your friends shouting at you, “look at my latest photo,” “join me later tonight,” and “what do you think of this?”

It’s a lot of noise.

Writing is a solitary undertaking. It is not a social event. In fact, many writers can’t write with any kind of distraction. You won’t always see these people at your local internet café and coffee house, despite the growing popularity of Wi-Fi. Many writers lock themselves in rooms until the story, the essay, or the book is complete. But the social media demons are always only a click away. Basically… you can run but you can’t hide. (Forgive the cliché please.)

Google chat, for example, pops up on my screen regardless of what site I’m on. It also makes an appearance on my phone. And alerts on Google+ show up even if I’m just using Google as a search engine and nothing else at the time. Facebook sends message notifications to my phone. Twitter… well, I have a special folder apart from my inbox just for all that.

You can do the obvious. You can turn your phone off and log out of all your accounts. That’s very wise. But you have to will yourself to do it. Writers are unique creatures. We possess a lot of character, but willpower is not always among our assets.

Here’s what some writer friends of mine do:

• “Don’t take breaks for food. If I know I can’t eat until I get something finished, I won’t let anyone distract me from my goal.”
• “I write fiction, so I make myself a promise. I won’t reply to any messages, but I’ll find ways to use them in my story. It’s a good writing exercise and it helps me to keep going.”
• “I post messages everywhere telling people about my writing goal. They can comment, but just the fact that I made my goal public gives me the motivation to achieve it.”
• “I have my friends bet on how much I can accomplish. If I’m not available, they know I’m trying to exceed their expectations.”

So that’s that. Some ideas are better than others, and not all ideas will work for everyone. I know I couldn’t write while hungry, so keeping myself from food wouldn’t do anything but make me moody.

What do you do to keep yourself focused?