While thinking about what questions to ask during my interview with Coffee House Press, I started thinking about plagiarism. (Don’t ask me how my brain works). There’s been so much news about the book publishing industry and plagiarism that I’ve especially noticed in the past three years. Going on right now is J. K. Rowling’s case with “The Harry Potter Lexicon,” a dictionary of Harry Potter written by his fan club.
In the past three years, there’s been:
- James Frey and “A Million Little Pieces,” his memoir about his problems with drug addictions and alcoholism.
- Misha Defonseca and her memoir about being raised by wolves as a Jewish child after her parents were murdered during WW II.
- Margaret Seltzer and her memoir about joining the Bloods gang and living in the ghetto.
- Ishmael Beah and his memoir about being a child soldier in
- Kaavya Vishwanath and “How Opal Metha Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” her novel that plagiarized the works of Meg Cabot, Sophie Kinsella, and Salman Rushdie.
All these authors made huge headlines because they made tons of money and their books were bestsellers. Kaavya Vishwanath was the one who touched (or poked) me the most. She was a Harvard graduate for one thing. She was Ivy League! And she got a huge sum for her book and a contract for forthcoming books and a movie deal with Dream Works. Her’s was the success I was dreaming of. All this at the age of nineteen! I was so jealous. And then disaster. Her writing career was over.
Which I realize now that I need to stop envying other people and work on my own damn stories. These people are making up stories about the life I’m living! Publishers are vying to publish books about hard lives, poverty the ghetto, etc. I need to sit my butt down and pound out my stories which are TRUE.
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