#omg i put this on archive org | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wellesleyunderground · 4 years

Text

Wellesley Writes It: Interview with Patrice Caldwell ’15, Founder of People of Color in Publishing

Patrice Caldwell ’15 is the founder & fundraising chair of People of Color in Publishing – a grassroots organization dedicated to supporting, empowering, and uplifting racially and ethnically marginalized members of the book publishing industry. Born and raised in Texas, Patrice was a children’s book editor before shifting to be a literary agent at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency.

In 2018, she was named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch honoree and featured on The Writer’s Digest podcast and Bustle’s inaugural “Lit List” as one of ten women changing the book world.

Her anthology, A Phoenix First Must Burn – 16 stories of Black girl magic, resistance, and hope – is out March 10, 2020 from Viking Books for Young Readers/Penguin Teen in the US/Canada and Hot Key Books in the UK! Visit Patrice online at patricecaldwell.com, Twitter @whimsicallyours, and Instagram @whimsicalaquarian.

Wellesley Underground’s Wellesley Writes it Series Editor, E.B. Bartels ’10, had the chance to converse with Patrice via email about publishing, reading, and writing. E.B. is grateful to Patrice for willing to be part of the Wellesley Writes It series, even with everything else she has going on!

EB: When did you first become interested in going into writing and publishing? Did something at Wellesley spark that interest?

PC: For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved writing. It’s how I best express myself. That love pretty naturally grew into creating stories. I’ve always had a very vivid imagination. I’ve also always been pretty aware that publishers exist. I remember at a young age noticing the logos on the spines of books (notating the imprint/publisher), so by the time I was a teen I could recall which publishers published my favorite books (served me very well in interviews, haha) and was curious about that process. But I was a theater kid, intensely, that’s what I thought I would do, but then I decided to go to Wellesley and majored in political science (especially theory—I took ever class Professor Grattan, she’s brilliant) but then dabbled in a bunch of other subjects, including English. I think English courses definitely strengthened my critical thinking, but I absolutely do not think you have to be an English or creative writing major in order to work in publishing or be a writer. My theater background is just as helpful as is my political theory one. (I have friends who are best-selling authors who did MFA programs and others who never went to college.)

Wellesley was my safe space. I came back to myself while at Wellesley. I wrote three (unpublished) manuscripts during my time there, starting the summer after my first year, and I held publishing and writing related internships. I also took a fantastic children’s literature course taught by Susan Meyer (who’s a children’s author herself!) that changed my world. I highly recommend it. We studied children’s literature, got to talk to an author and a literary agent, and we wrote our own stories. I later did a creative writing independent study with her, and I truly thank Professor Meyer for expanding my interest in writing and publishing.

EB: How did People in Color Publishing come about? What goals do you have for the organization? What would you like people to know about it?

PC: I founded People of Color in Publishing in August 2016 to allow people of color clearer access into the book publishing industry, better support networks, and professional development opportunities. It really is about sending the elevator back down for others after climbing (& maybe even assembling) the stairs.

We’re currently working towards nonprofit status. You can learn more about us and our initiatives at https://www.pocinpublishing.com/ and sign up for our newsletter, which is incredibly well done. As you’ll see when you visit the site, the organization really is a team effort. I don’t and couldn’t do this alone; I’ve had an amazing team with me from day one. We each play to our strengths and work really well together. (The org is very active on Instagram and Twitter, too!)

EB: I am really excited about your collection A Phoenix First Must Burn, coming out from Penguin Random House on March 10, 2020. What inspired you to put together that anthology? What was challenging about the process of compiling the anthology, and what was rewarding about it?

PC: Thank you; I’m so excited for it as well. I talk about this more in the book’s introduction, but I was inspired by my eternal love for Octavia Butler—the title even comes from a passage in Parable of the Talents—as well as similar adult market anthologies like Sheree R. Thomas’s Dark Matter, and wondering what one for teens would look like. The answer is power and imagination like I’ve never before seen, in the form of a kick-ass, #BlackGirlMagic anthology that’s hella queer—I love it and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Before I became a literary agent, I was a children’s book editor. The editing of these stories was the easy part. It was super fun. The hard part was wrangling of everyone, haha. Thankfully they were amazing to work with and I wasn’t doing it alone—my then editor Kendra Levin also has a fantastic editorial eye.

As for what was rewarding, my younger self needed this. Like I said, it’s Black and queer. Since Toni Morrison passed, a day hasn’t gone by in which I’ve thought, about how she wrote for Black people, especially Black women, unapologetically. I feel that deeply. I got to work with some of my favorite writers writing today. How often does someone get to say that, you know. And, I grew a lot as a writer. I never thought I could write a short story, but I did. We’ve been getting some really great early reviews (like this beautifully-written starred review from Kirkus, OMG!) But going back to how my younger self needed this, the most rewarding thing has been the people who’ve reached out how excited they are to read it and how much they’ve been craving a book like this. It’s a dream come true. A dream I strategized to reach, worked my butt off on, and so yeah, I’m over the moon.

EB: You're also the author of a YA fantasy book (publication date TBD) in addition to the anthology. How is the experience of writing a fantasy novel different and/or similar to compiling an anthology? What advice would you give to someone writing their own book (of any genre)?

PC: It’s such a different experience in that writing this novel is all me, especially because it hasn’t sold yet (I’m finishing revising it now). My agents are amazing, with an excellent editorial skills, and so they’re certainly there to help and advise me should I need them—and then I have author friends I can ask for advice too—but ultimately if I don’t write this book, it doesn’t get written. There’s no one else to nudge.

The similarities, however, between novels and short stories are that ultimately, I’m the same writer, I’m the same person. For instance, I love experimenting with structure. My story for A Phoenix First Must Burnbegins in the present, goes back in time, and ends again at the present. The story I just wrote, for Dahlia Adler’s Shakespeare-inspired anthology, is epistolary—told partially in journal entries, and my third short story (for an unannounced thing) takes place partially on the set of a scripted reality TV show, so there’s definitely going to be script excerpts throughout. My novel is similar in that it’s told through three women, but two of them are narrated in first present tense (like, I am) whereas one is in third past (she was). And then every few chapters I have an excerpt of something from this fantasy world’s archives—oral myths passed down about various gods, peace treaties made over the years, accounts from the war that just ended, etc. It’s been a huge challenge and lot of fun.

I didn’t have the skills to pull this book off when I started writing it, which is something I think a lot of writers deal with at some point. Therefore, I had two options: put the book down and write something more manageable or take the time it took to write this. Neither option is better than the other—the best option is what’s right for you, and I didn’t have anything more manageable that I was as passionate about, so I had to write through it. When you’ve tried everything you can possibly try (including breaks, they’re important!) to unstick your story, you have to write through it. You have to deal with the voices (including sometimes your own) saying you can’t, and the only way to truly deal with those voices is to show up to the paper, the screen, whatever it is, and write. In writing and believing in my own work before anyone else has, I’ve found my confidence. Confidence in your own writing is key because only you can write the book you want to write <3.

EB: What are you currently reading?

PC: Realm of Ash by Tasha Suri. I just loved herdebut novel, Empire of Sand, and I’m so pumped to be diving into this one. Badass women, incredibly rich worldbuilding, and very cool magic as well as a lot about access to forgotten history and assimilation into other cultures.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. It is getting fantastic early reviews and was pitched as a 21stcentury Lolita (by one of my agents who sold it actually) and given all the #MeToo conversations, it has ended up being super timely. I hated Lolita (could not finish), and I love this book. Oh, and Stephen King loved it, which for me is an auto-buy. It’s out March 10, 2020.

The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski. You definitely don’t have to love someone’s books to be friends with them, but in this case, Marie is a friend whose work I’m obsessed with. It’s set in the same world as another one of her series—one of my favorite series that’s like game theory in a fantasy world and begins with The Winner’s Curse. Marie is brilliant, this book is brilliant, and it’s also very queer. It’s out March 3, 2020.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. This book has been getting the best of reviews and praise, so it’s been at the top of my to-reads list for a while, but I started reading it because a friend mentioned that it has multiple POVs all in first person (which is very unusual), and like I said, I love playing around with stuff like that. This is book is a masterpiece.

As you can tell, I love reading books. I also love book hopping, so I’m always reading a bunch at once. I’m on a bit of a fantasy streak right now. But from October to December 2019 I read like a romance novel a week (sometimes three a week, haha) and revisited my favorite urban fantasy series, so if you’re into those check out Chloe Neill’s Chicagoland Vampires + Heirs of Chicagoland series, Tessa Dare’s Girl Meets Duke series and of course our very own Jasmine Guillory, my favorite of hers thus far is The Wedding Party). After I’m done with my revisions, I wanna take a writing break and sink into Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey and Dan Jones’s The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors.

EB: What future projects/goals do you have for yourself and your career?

PC: I spent most of Wellesley working towards two goals: being published and working in publishing. In doing so, I accomplished a lot in a very short time, and I totally wrecked my mental health—it took most of 2019 to rebuild that. I’m trying to live more in the present and enjoy that. Career wise, I’m just gonna trust that I’m already doing the work I need to do and that I have the support systems I need to help me keep doing that. And for a personal goal, I have been wanting to spend more time in Paris—I went back for the first time in ten years for all of February 2019, and just loved it. My whole soul felt at home, so I’d like to take some French lessons to fill in the gaps (I took French from middle school through sophomore year at Wellesley and achieved proficiency, but I want to become fluent). And then I want to visit more for longer and see where that takes me.

EB: I so admire your freelance hustle, and as someone attempting it myself, too, I know that sometimes it feels like you have to work 24/7 to make it possible. How do you set boundaries for yourself and your work? How do you take care of yourself?

PC: So, I’m a literary agent and a writer, which means my entire income comes from commission I make from the writer client projects I work on and sell as an agent and advance payments (and hopefully royalties down the line) as a writer. That said, I didn’t become a literary agent until June 2019, and didn’t get the first payment from a client book I sold until November, so most my income is still coming from writing (for reference, I received my first advance check in fall of 2018).

As of now, balancing the two isn’t that hard for me. But you have to understand that I was first an editor and a writer, so I had to do most of the deadlines for A Phoenix First Must Burn while also going into an office 5 days a week, from 10-7/8pm. Now, I manage my own schedule.

My main “freelance life” struggle was that I was diagnosed with ADHD this year. When I left my full-time, salaried job, at the end of 2018, I didn’t realize just how helpful that structure had been. To me, that structure was only ever a limitation. I felt like it was ridiculous with all of this technology that we all had to be in NYC, I felt like editors needed to be more proactive, I preferred to travel to book festivals and teach at workshops and meet writers where they are, etc. etc. But then, without that structure, everything fell apart. Suddenly, tasks that used to take me five minutes could actually take me five hours because I only had myself to answer to. I would hyper-focus on everything but what I needed to be doing. It was a really hard time for me because I had all of these things I wanted to do now that I finally had more time to do them, but ADHD had other plans—I constantly felt like I wasn’t achieving what I knew I could because I had done it before.

I had to learn to forgive myself. This is how my brain works, and there are a lot of strengths to it (like if I remove distractions like the internet, I can hyper-focus for hours, I’m a fantastic problem solver, and I thrive in chaos—all things that help me excel at my work). Learning to forgive yourself for not accomplishing all the things, whether you have a mental illness or not, is really important.

You also have to be hyper-aware of your strengths and weaknesses. What are things you know you’re just not good at? Can you pay someone else to do it? Is there an app you can download that can make that task easier? I delegate and outsource every detail-level thing that I can because I’m horrible at details and I’ve finally accepted that that’s okay. One person cannot do everything forever; it’s not sustainable.

And then you also have to say no. If you can afford to say no to something that doesn’t really interest you / have a high payoff, do so. That is how you set boundaries. My health has become so much better ever since I started saying no to more things. Why? It gives me time to do other things, those things I’ve been saying forever I’m going to make more time for (like French lessons and reading books for fun). Now, my evenings and weekends are for non-work things. I love my jobs they’re still jobs.

Trust that you’re on the right path. Trust that you have the support systems you need and if you aren’t or don’t, dream and strategize towards those.

Ultimately, I am the happiest I’ve ever been and that’s because I finally stopped focusing my whole life around my jobs, stopped caring what people who aren’t paying my bills think, and started living my actual life.

EB: What else would you like our readers to know about you and/or your work?

PC: I have a website, Twitter, Instagram, and a newsletter. If you enjoyed this interview, definitely sign up for my newsletter (& check out past issues) as I always give creative life pep talks, share recipes and what books and tv shows I’m loving. I think of my newsletter as a longer form version of my Twitter. My website is a pretty standard website—you can find out more about my own books, my clients, events I’m attending, etc. there. And my Instagram is slightly more personal, with pretty pictures of my face and my book haha, and I share daily/weekly updates about my writing there via IG stories.

And, of course, buy my book: https://patricecaldwell.com/a-phoenix-first-must-burn

Thank you so much for having me and for reading. Happy New Year!

#wellesleywritesit #Wellesley Writes It #Wellesley #Wellesley College #Wellesley Underground #wellesleyunderground #Patrice Caldwell #EB Bartels #E.B. Bartels #class of 2010 #class of 2015 #Wellesley '15 #Wellesley '10 #People of Color in Publishing #publishing #writing #people of color #PoC

3 notes · View notes

ginnyzero · 4 years

Text

Copypaste Cris, Plagiarism, and Fandom

(Originally Posted April 2019)

Recently, there has been a very large controversy in writer twitter. A woman who I’d rather not name outside of Cris, has plagiarized a very long list of books and authors by stitching them together like Frankenstein and then passed the books off as their own. We’re talking taking paragraphs directly from other books and using them in their books. Paragraphs!

This isn’t what anyone ever meant when they said “good authors steal.” Or “taking from many authors is research.” This is out and out theft of other writer’s words. And it’s not cool. And I think most authors in original IP and in fandom spaces would agree about that.

However, what has come out of it is a very informative thread about how authors can search through google if their words have been plagiarized and put up on places like Wattpad or AO3. But in the thread, I noticed that there was no difference being paid to original work and fan works. It’s as if the creator of the thread didn’t know there legally is a difference between the two creations.

Quickly, fandom works are works both written and drawn in a specific book/movie/television universe created by people (fans) not the original author and may or may not use the same characters/settings/world building as the original author. (I have to accommodate for extreme alternate universes here.) They are posted on sites such as fanfiction(net), AO3(org), deviantArt(com) and so on.

Fan fiction has a very long history that includes the Iliad, Dante's Inferno, Shakespeare, etc. Basically, it's older than dirt and not about to go away. The concept of "completely" original work didn't arise until the early 1900s and before then was looked upon with disdain. You couldn't make money off an original work! Le gasp! With the rise of copyright and other such laws, there has become a legal separation between original IP and fan transformative works. (And also the abuse of copyright law.)

And in recent times, it feels that younger authors who are not part of the fandom scene don't know or aren't educated in the difference.

I blame Wattpad.

Wattpad has made a very iffy decision IMO to host both fan fiction and original fiction. There are also a lot of baby authors out there with no context of fandom history and fandom diaspora after the demise of LJ hasn’t created a new “community” to educate.

The closest thing that fandom has now to a history site is fanlore. There are a lot of fandom authors/creators who hate fanlore with an abiding passion. Yes, there are posts on tumblr about fandom history, but its shouting into a void. Because of this, fandom history has been lost or has been shrouded in the veils of hearsay. This hearsay has been spread to original authors making them afraid of things that would most likely never happen.

But simple etiquette things like: Put Disclaimers on your work that you don’t own it. Don’t send your fan fiction to the authors. Don’t try to make money off of fan fiction. And don’t talk about fandom to actors/creators. OMG. No. Have been lost. In fact, a lot of baby fandom authors either don’t care or don’t know they need to know things about disclaimers or why you don’t tell original creators your head canons. This can cause a lot of frustration between original creators and their fans. Not to mention some really awkward moments with actors/creators at Con panels. The meta fiction books about fandom make fandom cringe and froth the way the BDSM community cringes and froths about 50 Shades.

At the same time, the old code of fandom silence and trying not to attract the attention of original creators for fear of being sued has caused this schism between the two writing communities. The schism comes from both communities having 2 sets of rules and each community not knowing the other set unless they’ve come from that community in the 1st place. Not that anyone writes these rules down either.

Each side eyes each other with disdain. (Unless an author has come from fandom into original.)

So, now Wattpad has created this community where original IP authors are mixing with fandom authors. Neither know each other’s etiquette rules and each resents the other for existing in the same space. The reason I call Wattpad’s decision iffy is because when fanfiction(net) realized its authors wanted to post original work, they created fictionpress with a different TOS. As far as I’m aware, Wattpad is posting fan fiction and original fiction under the same TOS.

Legally, I’d call this very squishy and not a good idea. Not a good idea, as in, “Have you been sued today?” Especially as Wattpad is trying to transition from a free platform to a paid platform. If a baby author starts trying to sell fan fic, well, it’s a good way to end up being sued. There is going to come a point where Wattpad is going to have to make a choice. Do they continue posting fan fic and deal with legal repercussions? Or do they ban it entirely and piss off a big chunk of their user base? I predict banning.

Whereas, Archive Of Our Own or AO3, was created by the Organization of Transformative Works expressly for the purpose of hosting and legally protecting fanfiction. AO3 does have original works on it. A tiny fraction of a percent of the millions of work on AO3 are labelled as original work. There are some (57K) original works on AO3. That’s smaller than the number of Tolkien fanworks (61K). Because most authors who post on AO3 know that original isn’t the point of AO3 and they’re posting fandom works under the same pseudonym.

And once again, Fanfiction(net) handled the problem of writers wanting to step out of fan works and into original works by creating an entirely new website with the same user interface. Thus keeping the works legally separated and everyone in the happy space of “this is someone else’s IP I can’t make money off of” and “this is my IP, I’m building a reader platform, and I can make money off of it eventually.”

Fictionpress is probably why you can’t copy/paste or download fan fiction off of fanfiction(net.) Having one user interface means protecting the words of the original IP also means protecting the words of the fandom IP.

On top of this, there are indie and traditional authors that either don’t know or don’t like the concept of fan fiction. They don’t want other people to play with their characters. Those are perfectly valid feelings and ffnet will accommodate certain authors to a point. By to a point, I mean usually under a threat of lawsuit from a very big name author who has asked politely for their works not to be included in the site. FFnet also banned song fics and NC-17 because they rely on ADS.

I don’t know about AO3, because AO3 rose up after some of the bigger authors relented about fanfiction and I don’t have an account there. I stopped posting fanfiction for the most part around 2010 due to severe burnout. It wasn’t until 2012 or so that I worked through some issues and started writing… original.

I still keep a toe in fandom spaces to keep track of the controversies and what’s going on there because it may show up in original spaces later and vice versa. We of fandom often don't realize how small we actually are and how many people don't know about fandom. We're a global community. It's fairly common to have friends in Europe and Asia and Australia. (This makes getting together difficult.) Twitter is now doing this for the original writer community.

If your work becomes popular, say with a related comic or a television show or you get a movie or you write romance in a series that gets a lot of readers. (Yes, book fandoms are a thing.) Fan works, transformative works protected under the rights of fair use, are inevitable. People (fans) that aren't you, the original creator, are going to create stories, make art, put together song lists with, of, and about your characters, that you, as the original creator, will have no control over. And to an extent, in the case of fan fiction, legally shouldn't read in case you're working on a similar idea at the same time due to the universal consciousness of mankind.

Fan works aren't the same as original works. Fandom people know this. They know they can't make money off of your ideas. They aren't even trying to make money off of your ideas, at least the ethical knowledgeable fandom writing creators aren't. (Fan art is different.) They have many other reasons, mostly love, for borrowing your characters to tell their stories with for a time.

Please, don't mix this up with authors plagiarizing your works. There is a legal definition of plagiarism and most fan fiction doesn't fall under it.

Here is the thing, most fandom authors aren’t going to be copying your work word for word into their fic. It’s not really the point of fan fic. They may drop a line or two for reference if they’re doing a canon divergent scene, but paragraphs are off limits. In fact, most the time when fandom authors are caught plagiarizing. They’re plagiarizing works that have nothing to do with the original IP. Or are plagiarizing other fandom authors by reposting those works and claiming them as their own.

9 times out of 10, fandom is your friend. Fandom creating transformative works of your things is free publicity for your work. Granted, fandom usually only swirls around things that become big and popular. Twilight, the Hunger Games, MCU, SuperWhoLock. Fandom is also fickle. The creator and fandom divide has gotten extremely thin with the rise of social media and the demand that creators be on social media. The lines between original and fan fiction have also become blurred. Example, the “omegaverse” controversy.

Fandom can quickly become an enemy. More and more, fans feel entitled to tell creators exactly how they feel about a work when it doesn’t go the way they want it to do so. See Star Wars and a half a dozen cartoons. Fandom has a long memory and an unparalleled capacity for grudges. See James Gunn and GotG. This isn’t cool as because it's the internet and there is "anonymity" it can devolve or escalate into doxxing, swatting, and death threats fair quickly.

Doxxing being when a fan outs where another fan or an original creator lives in order for people to move out of cyber bullying and into the realm of stalking or physical death threats. Swatting is more common in the gaming community where on gamer calls in a fake report to their local police and the police come to raid their house. This is hugely illegal!

In fact, probably within the next 2 decades, those writing fandom stories now are probably going to start being original IP authors peers as more and more YOUNG fandom authors transition from fan fiction into original fiction. There are more traditionally published authors than many are aware of that started out as fan fiction authors to hone their skills or as a hobby that turned into a passion. They’re very attached to fan fiction and quite defensive about it.

(And many self-published authors also started out in fandom circles. However, traditionally published authors like us less than fandom authors.)

They also know the rules of fandom. Disclaim your work. Don’t talk about fandom. Don't send creators your ideas. Especially, don’t talk about your RPF fan work to the actors of a certain series. Don’t email death threats to their spouses. Don’t dox people. Don’t take writing commissions for fan fic. (This doesn’t apply to fan art and thus the arguments rise in fandom spaces about that!)

With the rise of social media and things like AO3, the need for disclaimers have fallen out of fashion. More and more people are willing to stand up and say “we are fandom!” We hear more about the bad things than the good things. Good things are, “fandom keeps me from suicide.” and “I got a job through fandom!” (More artists than writers because of the whole legal issue of original IP writers reading fan works.) “Fandom makes me happy,” is prolly my fave.

Because of copypastecris, there are now a lot of original authors out there afraid that their works are being taken and used elsewhere. They're now googling or using software where they upload passages of their books and try to find similar passages on places like Wattpad or AO3 (if they know AO3 exists.) They don't know there is a difference between original work and fan work.

They just see "oh, people are using my characters. I don't like that. That's stealing! Stealing is wrong!" Then they send a DMCA. When that's not what plagiarism is legally.

And fandom doesn't know that this is happening. Not a peep has come up about copypastecris in the fandom spaces I know about. If an author hits them with a DMCA for plagiarism on a fandom story that is clearly labelled fan fic, they're going to be blindsided. Since many fandom writers are young, they're going to be terrified!

(A DMCA for a stolen photograph/artwork for a cover is different. DMCA away. Too many people think that anything art wise posted to the internet is free for the taking. They also know how to remove watermarks. And yes, this attitude falls upon books too, thus piracy. But that's a different issue than fan works!)

So, please don’t punish fandom for copypastecris. Fandom doesn’t know about copypastecris. They don’t care about copypastecris. And they’d be as pissed as you are about it if they did know because most of them have ethics and that’s not cool.

(I’d compare the copypastecris to their Cassie Claire controversy back in the late 2000s. But even Cassie Claire didn’t have THAT much chutzpah to plagiarize close to 100 books. I have no idea how much editing went into her books to make them publishable as original fiction. Most fandom authors will tell you unless it's an extreme AU, taking a fan fiction and trying to make it original fiction isn't worth the bother. It's too much work.)

Please, check the work before you DMCA and if it is a fan work and labelled as a fan work, take a moment to breathe and not hit that button. Count the words. Make sure it legally fits the definition of plagiarism before hurting someone who loves your stories. Fandom isn’t your enemy. They aren’t trying to claim your IP and make money off of it. Thank you.

0 notes