Ah, yes. It is true. I've been MIA for what seems like forever, but now I'm back, and filled with new writing drama. If it weren't ten in the morning, I would say that the silver lining would be the glass of wine(because every good whine deserves a glass of wine as a reward)at the end of this post....oh well.
Anyway, sorry I've been slacking for a while. I've had office drama, no sleep because my husband snores like a Looney Tunes character and flails about violently for no particular reason, waking me in the process so that I can cover my head for protection(seriously), and thank-goodness-my husband-is-still-alive-drama(he works with heavy machinery and sometimes it's scary), so things have been wearing on me lately.
Commence whining! Oh, wait, you mean I already started in that previous paragraph?? Silly me.
Continue whining!
I was blog surfing yesterday. And I decided to pick one and go back to the beginning, to get to know the blogger and where she came from. In one post she discusses her novel and happens to mention a backstory....um...hello?? Have I met you before, Person-who-wrote-an-almost-identical-backstory-to-my-MC? Because, seriously. The two were so similar, you would have thought that maybe we had been a writing duo at one time and recently decided to go solo but neither of us could decide who got to keep the ideas.
Unfortunately for me, this person has already been agented, and because we appear to write in the same genre, I have to come up with a completely different backstory. Or at least twist mine in some way to make it spectacular on its own.
::Sigh::
My other whine of the day is that my MC's name is the same as another fellow blogger. This is not so bad, as we write in different genres and they don't have the same surname. I don't think. If a name were easy to change, I would do it in a heartbeat, just so I wouldn't feel all copycatty. But it's not easy to change in the least. So, I'm going to keep it.
The bright side to my very whiny Saturday morning? I finally came up with a title for my ms! Or, at least a working title. Now I don't have to open my YA Novel file which has always made me feel a little silly. And now that I have this, I feel a little more pumped about writing it, like I know what I'm shooting for or something. Does that make sense?
So that, in a large nutshell, is what has been weighing on my mind lately. Hopefully by my next post I'll have the glass of wine(except that I usually write these at work which probably wouldn't be a good thing)and no whining to go along with it.
How about you? Have you ever read something that is eerily similar to what you've been pouring your heart and soul into? How did you react?
Have a good weekend, everyone!
I had that happen with the wip I have going right now. Only I flipped on the TV to see previews of a new series coming that looked just like what I was writing. LOL
ReplyDeleteI don't think the name is a big issue though. As long as it isn't Edward or what'shername from Twilight. LOL
I blogged about the name thing recently. One of my characters (not the main) has a name similar to the MC of a bestseller. I got a lot of great advice and most said to keep your name, so that's what I'm going to do now.
ReplyDeleteAlso, don't worry about having similar backstories for your characters. It's how you write your story, your voice, that will make yours stand out. And I promise it will be different from the one you read about. Good luck!
Yes! This did happen to me with my first novel. It was fantasy set in a world where each different nation kind of centered around a different element. (Air, Fire, Water, Earth/trees)
ReplyDeleteThen I heard of this little show called Avatar the Last Airbender.
Man, that was a bummer. But in the end I decided that there were many differences of course, so I kept writing the novel.
In the end, there will always be similar ideas out there. People don't mind it. I mean, hey, they were saying that there's nothing new under the sun way back in Biblical times. But somehow we keep having new books and new movies and new things all the time.
A friend of mine and I are both working on WIP (separately), and coincidentally, both with a certain type of animal in it (a strange one, weirdly coincidental).
ReplyDeleteWhen I found out, it felt weird. Then, I remembered that in our cases, neither of us are done with our WIPs, neither of us have agents (yet) or any of that biz, so to worry about now seems, well, for me, silly.
Good luck with this. As I'm finding out, the writing world can be a strange, strange place.
I just found out some similar news. My MC has the same name as a blog friends who just signed their book deal.
ReplyDelete*Scratching my head*
Oh well, I love my MC and her name is befitting. We'll see what happens.
I've seen several books come out over the last couple of years that are in the same general area as my book but nothing so specific that I need to change anything. At least that's what I think. My book just went out on submission last week, so we'll see.
ReplyDeleteSo weird... another blogging bud of mine and I have been chatting about our MS's. and low and behold, we BOTH use the same key term. Kind of an "oh crap" moment at first, but upon closer inspection we realized that we'd wrappend completely different concepts around the same term. Kind of cool, actually, now that I think about it!
ReplyDeleteI think you should keep your backstory and the name - because like others have said, it's all about how YOU write your story.
I've found a couple of similarities between my novel and another writer friend. I almost freaked out and quit when I found out, but then we discussed the similarities and figured out that our stories went in totally different directions. Neither of us ended up changing anything.
ReplyDeleteIt does suck, though, to realize that someone came up with the exact same thing (or similar) thing as you did.
Thanks for stopping by my blog and commenting! It's nice to meet you! :)
Hey Julie!
ReplyDeleteSometimes we all need a good whine! No shame in that! I usually google my book titles before setting my hopes on them. I know the publisher may very well change them anyway, but I still grow attached to my titles. I know titles aren't copyrighted, but still. All in one day, I discovered (AFTER I'd grown attached and AFTER googling the book titles) that my first two book titles just came out as recently published books. I definitely felt like whining about that!
I'm a white wine girl, myself. Titles are something I enjoy creating. I usually have a list of alternates. It's weird when you read something that is almost identical to what you've written...it makes me feel naked and less original.
ReplyDelete~ Wendy
Hi Julie,
ReplyDeletei hope you don't mind me posting this here, but I've started up a community forum for writers called the The Writer's Chronicle where we can meet and discuss all that is writing with other 'online' writers. Also with the recent addition of some published author members we have decided to set up a section to support published writers and help them promote themselves and their books - as we all know how hard it is to get published and how its even harder to get a large readership!
I know this post is out of the blue, but i was hoping that you might drop in and take a look around and perhaps join if your interested?
I'd greatly appreciate it,
thanks
Emily Cross
Writer's Chronicle Link: http://thewriterschronicle.forumotion.net/forum.htm