Cassie Edwards plagiarism latest

[julesjones]

This has been rumbling on all week, but until now it's been chunks lifted from non-fiction sources. It's just possible to believe that an author could believe that this was acceptable behaviour (clue: it's not, and it's still plagiarism). But the latest news tonight is that the eerie similarities include ones to a 1930 Pulitzer Prize winning *novel*.

The academic romance blog Teach Me Tonight has two posts (so far) on the nature of plagiarism:
http://teachmetonight.blogspot.com/2008/01/publish-and-be-damned-incorrect-use-of.html
http://teachmetonight.blogspot.com/2008/01/words-words-words-1.html

I'd comment there, but I've just used up my typing ability for the day. I'm off to bed with a hot water bottle. :-(

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Yikes!

And it occurs to me that not only is she swiping passages almost wholesale, in every instance she is making them worse, destroying the rhythm of the words, bleaching the poetry out of them.

(Makes me want to go and read the original!)

Not to mention the passage on page three that was soo good she stole it twice.

I have to admit that I have a certain scepticism when it comes to extraordinarily prolific authors.

I just don't see how anyone can cope with the mechanics of writing that much - the physical writing and re-reading and seeing whether they can make it better and doing research - and not get burnt out from it. There may be writers who can produce stunningly beautiful prose the first time, each time... but most of us need several drafts of one sort or another. There may be writers who never hit a wall and find that the plot as envisioned just Won't Work or that something important is missing or that the main character would never do what they want him to do - and so they stall, and redraft, and take more time. a book-in-two-months schedule doesn't allow much time for that, and so I'm not surprised if the result is formulaic.

And an author website linking to a myspace page? *So* tacky.

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

Then again, if you try to suggest that Nora Roberts must be plagiarizing because of her output, I'm gonna take you down! ;)

[julesjones]

That thought did occur to me. :-)

Sarah, I've got a post brewing on intertextuality as a conversation with the genre using one of my own short stories as an example. Can I dump it on you for beta-reading if/when I get a draft finished?

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! Email address forthcoming.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHAH

*sigh* Yeah. Just.... yeah. *eyeroll.*

[tharain.livejournal.com]

Good god. That's even more blatant than the others posted bits.