Distracted from the Work

[alanajoli]

In one of the comments from yesterday's post, lyster (good friend of the blog and fellow Substrater Max Gladstone) noted things that have been distracting him from writing and included this sentence:

This wasn't a problem until recently, when I got a day job, because I could get all my Work done during the day and only rarely had small-w work (the paying, non-writing kind) to compete with it for time.

There are definitely days when I forget to think of the Work -- the writing that's actually telling stories, that reflects passions and suffering and (dare I say?) art and the mythic impulse (to use a coined phrase) -- with its capital letter. And by all rights, the Work needs its capital!

It is so easy to get bogged down in small-w work. It pays the bills. It's easily justifiable as a way to spend time. It has real actual deadlines. There's someone on the other end holding you accountable. And that makes it so, so easy to give small-w work the priority.

m_stiefvater just posted recently about how to write a novel. (Go read that post and come back. I'll wait.) She says:

This is what you say: “‘I’m writing the novel. Starting now. Not only that, but I’m finishing it.”

Focusing on the Work is the only way for that novel to ever become more than a dream.

I was chatting with a fellow freelancer about the balance of work vs. Work (in slightly different words) in an e-mail earlier today, and I offered advice, despite my not having mastered the balance. I almost always err on the side of work. And that means the Work often suffers or gets left behind. I need to follow m_stiefvater's advice: I'm writing the novel. Starting now.

Well... maybe starting after this deadline. :)

Comments

[lyster.livejournal.com]

Yay! Go 'Lana go! Rah rah sis-boom-bah-etc!

I seriously want to see more of Blackstone. I want to see more boarding-school-magic-y goodness.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

I want to get back to that, too. But I *also* want to work on all these short stories in my brain, which is the Work as well. :) I had a great idea this morning for that gender-bending anthology open submission I sent out to Substrate -- *if* George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion is in the public domain. I need to do some checking...

But today, obituaries!

[jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com]

No you don't. Pygmalion was written in 1913, which places it reliably in the public domain, at least in the US. (As a US publisher I have had reason to know these things.) Under US copyright law, anything published prior to 1923 is in the public domain, end of story. It's a lot more complex in years after 1923, but that's not an issue in this case.

If your publisher is outside the US, you may have to research it further, but if your publisher is here, no problem.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Oh, wonderful! My theater history is a little lacking, so I couldn't remember if Pygmalion (set in England) was also *published* in England, which certainly would have made things more difficult. Hurrah for public domain!

And thanks for knowing that off the top of your head!

[jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com]

It was in fact published in England, but that's not the issue, really. What matters is where you publish your derivative work: In the US, there's no problem. Copyright law in the UK is odd in some respects (the King James Bible is still in copyright over there, for reasons that escape me) but it doesn't matter as long as your publisher is American.

Also, quoting from a play can be done in small quantities even for plays that are within copyright under fair use provisions--and adapting a storyline is generally possible without restriction, since storylines are not copyrightable.

I had to study copyright law heavily when I began gathering historical material on the Old Catholic Church to get it back into print for current adherents, and that's where this all came from.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Ah, I thought there was some trouble with Sherlock Holmes and Peter Pan being used as characters because of their British origin -- that special permissions needed to be gotten -- but it's been several years since I did my (only very) cursory research.

I'm actually thinking of borrowing a character to play with, rather than quoting or borrowing the storyline (which is borrowed from the myth it takes its title from anyway). Are there additional complications there? Or should I still be fine?

[jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com]

Well, it does become complicated once you move outside the US. Peter Pan went into the public domain in the UK in 2007, 70 years after Barrie's death. Pygmalion will remain under copyright in the UK until 2020 (70 years after Shaw's death) but is in the public domain here. (The governing factor in the UK is the date of the author's death, not the date of publication. There may be other factors that I'm not aware of. My research was of a CYA nature and so not exhaustive, and thanking merciful God, I am not a lawyer.) One quick way to check copyright status of major works is to see if the US Project Gutenberg site carries the work.

The legal status of borrowing characters is a gnarly one (what you're doing is in a sense fanfic) but if your publisher is in the US it shouldn't be an issue any more than publishing a new edition of the play itself. And if the character in question appears in earlier tellings of the original myth, you can worry even less. I haven't read Pygmalion in 38 years or so (and you're much more up on myth than I am) but unless the character is one that Shaw made up out of whole cloth, I don't think there's an issue at all, even in the UK.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

If I want to use Shaw's *version* of the character, of course, then it's quite clear I'm borrowing. :) That publishing in the U.S. clarity is very helpful, though, so I'll feel safe as I'm writing and see if the idea even pans out. (It was a brainstorm I had on the edge of sleep last night, so who knows whether or not it will work when I get it onto paper. *g*)

Thanks again for all the advice!