FOR WRITERS: A reminder about the public nature of the 'net

[shalanna]

The dangers of posting your openings on every contest and here all the time . . . yes, there are a few risks.

Fair warning. Just in case you hadn't really thought about it, you might want to remember that there are some risks in posting your openings for critique and all over your journal the way I do here. I had made a post about something I experienced today, but I can't figure out how to phrase it so that it doesn't cause the masses to march up the hill brandishing torches at me, so I'm going to hold back on the specific observations. Suffice it to say that your words live on when you post them. Not only do servers and search engines archive them, but also people can copy them and save them to files on their own computers. This may or may not bother you. If you haven't taken that into consideration, you probably should . . . before you post too much of any work in progress. For that matter, your opinions and your experiences get out there and can be saved off by other people. I'm not even saying that it WILL be, but that it CAN be.

Not trying to scare you, but just bringing out that point.

In any case, I meant this as kind of a fair warning to all of you who are thinking of doing what I do and posting your work publicly all over the place. If you do that, be prepared to wonder when you see stuff that is VERY SIMILAR IN FEEL to yours. And you most likely will. If it's going to bug you, don't post your stuff on public sites for critique, even when agents run contests. That was the basic point I wanted to beat into the ground.

I'll probably continue posting my stuff, because I get useful feedback. But . . . I'll always wonder. Could somebody take my dreck, edit it up to make it voice-free and faster-moving, soak it in a dilute solution of Hemingway, add some boinking, and manage to sell it? That could happen--and it would be flattering, if bothersome. So I have to accept that it could happen. It's the price I pay, I suppose.

I was amused by the thought that this could have happened . . . but you might be upset by it. Just a heads-up here. You probably knew that already, anyway.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled media deluge.

Comments

[debg.livejournal.com]

That's why there are customised locked lists. Believe me, there are very few people on my flist who get to see even the majority of the posts.

And, too,

[rcmckee.livejournal.com]

I've lost track of the number of times I've come up with an idea for an essay or a story or an issue I want to do, and just about the time I come up with the ideal market for it and get it all ready to pitch to them...

Guess what turns up on the cover of the next issue?

Right. The idea I was about to (but hadn't) given them.

It's a small universe with a nasty sense of humor.

[coneycat.livejournal.com]

Someday I will write a detailed post about the coldness that crept over my hands and feet and stomach the day I was happily reading a mystery about racehorses... and then encountered a finding-the-body scene that was IDENTICAL to the finding-the-body scene in my own work-in-progress. I mean, identical right down to the moment where the body-finder peered into the stall and realized the dead person had to have been murdered, because the dear sweet gelding who lived in that stall would never ever have kicked anybody.

There was absolutely no possibility that the writer of the published book could have seen my story, and I know for a fact that I'd never heard of him before.

Never underestimate the power of coincidence. Really.