Quick! Hide your manuscripts!
So I was sitting around doing what I do best (seething over the good fortune of others) as I read the tale of the 19 year old college sophomore at Harvard who received a $500,000 advance while still in high school. Nothing makes my day more than knowing I’m a total failure. A big, fat, over-the-hill failure.
However, just days later, Kaavya Viswanaathan, author of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life by Little, Brown, is under intense fire amid charges of plagiarism. Turns out her book has passages that mirror text from Megan McCafferty’s books Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. Viswanaathan apologized profusely on the Today show, but the lawsuit stands. Seems Little, Brown has no plans to pull the book, and that is what Mcafferty and Random House are seeking.
I have not read any of the books in question, but I would certainly like to see some examples of the passages in question in order to judge for myself. After all, even Helen Keller was pilloried regarding a short story, and Mark Twain himself championed her; confessing to unconscious regurgitation. In short, the jury is still out.
In the meantime, I can now agonize over not only being unpublished, but being unplagiarized.
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