Publishing: There’s been a nice little flurry of plagiarism scandals recently. Helen Hergmann’s cult teen bestseller is a patchwork of other people’s writing – she defends herself against the claim by claiming she’s “mixing”. Marie Darrieussecq lifted passages from Camille Laurens’s account of losing her baby in childbirth, and accuses Laurens of exhibiting “a crazed desire to be plagiarised”. Zachery Kouwe plagiarised the Wall Street Journal for the New York Times. Nick Simmons plagiarised Bleach and other famous mangas for Incarnate. Do these things really come in waves, or is it just the noticing of them? We find one plagiarist and we’re more cautious for a while in what we read, and start seeing more.

I think there is a problem (obvious in a lot of comments to the above articles) with confusing plagiraism and copyright violation. Some people plagiarise works that are out of copyright – legally, there’s not a lot that can be done, but they’re still passing someone else’s work off as their own. Sometimes accidentally, sometimes without knowing that what they’ve done constitutes plagiarism. Cassie Edwards plagiarised non-fiction sources, claiming this didn’t count (though she did raise the plight of black-footed ferrets in the public’s mind, at least). It could all have been avoided with a list of credits in the back of the books (and putting it in her own words – plagiarised passages are often easy to spot because they’re not in the author’s voice). Plagiarism: know what it is, where it differs from copyright violation, and you know how to avoid doing it.

InsPiring: Caricature map of Europe, circa 1914. It was originally drawn for Leviathan by Scott Westerfield, a steampunk story in which Darwin discovered genetics (hence Clankers – the mechanical nations, and the Darwinists, the countries with genetically engineered bio-weapons). Frankly, I just find the map both awesome and inspiring, and I really want to read the book.

Interest Piquing: An Hour a Day Keeps the Existential Angst Away. A lot of what’s posted on the BBC Writer’s Room blog isn’t relevant to me, as it’s calls for scriptwriters or updates on the screenwriting classes. But everyone now and then it throws out something that’s relevant to every writer.

Procrastination: I can read movies – Classic movies reinterpreted as sixties pulp book covers. There’s more on flickr too.