Stealing words and ideas

Stealing is defined as "to take the property of another wrongfully." It's one of those things we teach our children. Don't tell lies. Don't steal, et cetera, et cetera. But we do tell lies. It happens all the time. You have someone call you, an acquaintance you don't like much and she/he invites you to dinner and you say, "oh, I can't because..." And lying is really okay, as long as it's not one of those "I didn't have sexual relations with that woman" kinds of lies. But stealing? That's a whole different matter, isn't it?

For the past two weeks, the news in the publishing business has been the stealing of Megan Mccafferty's words by Kaavya Vishwanathan, an Indian American in her book "Opal Mehta...something or the other." This young woman got a big contract at the age of 17 and instead of doing what any smart person would do, make the best of it, she went ahead and copied someone else's work and said it was her own. Almost 45 passages of Megan's first two books found their way almost word-to-word in the Opal Mehta book.

In this case my sympathy is with Megan and Megan only. She worked hard to write her book and this theft is akin to someone walking into your home and stealing something very expensive. I can only imagine her frustration and I'm impressed that she isn't getting on The Today Show or any other show to scream out her frustration. Instead Megan has been dignified and hats off to her.

Kaavya and her publisher Little Brown have been...well, dishonest. Kaavya claims that the literal copying of 45 passages was "unintentional." And I am amazed that it took Little Brown almost a week after the allegations were leveled to pull the book off the shelves.

In this case, I am pleased that bad publicity did not benefit the thief. The book was recalled and book tours in Europe cancelled and movie deals were scrapped.

As someone who is also Indian, I feel a pang of disappointment. But mostly I'm disappointed as a writer. How can a real writer steal someone's work and then blatantly stand there and say it was an accident?

Another new story, another new world

I finally have started work on my next book. Since it takes about a year to a year and a half between when you finish a book and when the book is published, it makes sense to start a book now that will be in the stores in 2008. Lots of long-term planning in this business! I remember someone had said to me when I first started looking for agents (with a rather cocky attitude) that if I enjoyed watching molasses move, I'd love the publishing business.

My sixth book, for now, is about honor killing amongst Pakistani immigrants in Denmark. I have done most of the research and feel ready to start writing the book though I'll have to repeatedly spend time in Norrebrø, an area of Copenhagen where most immigrants live and the story takes place.

I love being able to step into strange and new worlds and explore them. Whenever I finish a book it's as if a relationship has come to an end and I feel sad. Though by the time the copy edits come rolling through I'm sick of the book and the people in it. But that's another story!

In other news, my third book, Serving Crazy with Curry just went into a third print. Thanks to everyone who bought and read my book.

Where do you get your ideas?

A lot of writers will tell you that the question they dread the most and they get asked the most is “Where do you get your ideas?” I have another question people ask me, since I have a fulltime job, two kids and one husband, “Where do you find the time?”

For the first question, I usually answer, “I have no idea” not because I don’t, because it’s just too hard to explain. Every story evolves in a different way. For the second question I answer, “I don’t get enough sleep and I have a really nice husband.” And this is true. I don’t get enough sleep and I have a fabulous husband who will keep the kids away when my brain goes on overdrive and I MUST JUST WRITE.

It happened today. It started about five minutes before we were leaving for the mall. We have a very nice one in Denmark called Field’s and it’s sometimes open on Sundays. Unbelievable!

I don’t know why, but I was reading something, don’t remember what when suddenly I thought, “A Boy Named Aslam.” It came out of nowhere and I started writing about Aslam. But I wrote about a paragraph and then we left.

We shopped, bought rain suits for both the kids, one with Ninja Turtles, the other one in plain blue (the little fella doesn’t have a favorite character he wants to wear yet). We ate lunch at an American Diner and my 20 month old son ate two huge sausages in record time. He takes after his father. My older son ate a lot of fries and chicken and said about ten times he couldn’t eat anymore. It was a great trip. We drove home and the kids were sleeping, so we took a longer drive and scouted out areas we think we want to buy a house in next year. All this time, not once did I go back to Aslam.

We came home and unpacked. I went into the study and the word document was still open on my computer. I sat down and started writing. Sometime after that, I don’t recall when, my husband closed the door and kept the kids away. I was gone for three hours. When I came out, I had an eighteen page short story about a boy named Aslam who had grown into a man named Yakub and a journalist who wants to find out who he was because Aslam did something very, very bad.

I have no idea how this story evolved, where it came from, and why it turned out the way it did. I made my husband read it as soon as I was done, exhausted. My kids came running to me saying “Mama, I did…and he did…” like I was gone for a few days instead of a few hours.

My husband patiently read the story while he watched the soup cooking (I watched for about two minutes and sat down in front of the television, zombie-fashion). He loved the story…and that means something to me because when he doesn’t like something he tells me, even though I get mad at him and say things like “Whose side are you on anyway?”

Of course, I need to edit the story and all of that. And it will take me a few days to fix it up for…I have no clue what I’m going to do with it. Maybe nothing! But it’s been one of those days when this little spark inside just blew up into a tornado and became a story. So, how do I get my ideas? I have no clue and that’s mostly true; because every story evolves in a different way, some just burst into being for no good reason.