Can You Sue Yourself for Plagiarism?

Over the years, I've had more than one pen name. Too, as a sometime ghost writer I've occasionally had to pretend to be someone else entirely, to the point that I've been known to describe myself as "professionally schizophrenic." pxj to pxj: Who am I being today?

Earlier, I seem to have been Echo. And I am not amused. (Nor am I! ...or I!)

Rex Stout's most famous character Nero Wolfe, in Plot It Yourself, avered that a writer's punctuation was as identifiable as his choice of words or his paragraphing. I certainly won't argue that point (remind me some day, and I'll rant about tin-eared editors who so materially change an author's technical style as to make the resulting work unreadable by that author's fans), but it's not my punctuation that I'm worried about today. After all, semicolons aren't copyrightable. And commas are cheap.

It's names that got me started on this particular rant, but on reflection, plotlines and phrasings are the real concern: I'm repeating myself today, writing things I've already written. Not "revisiting familiar territory," not even "making twists on favorite themes,"but writing the same thing, nearly word for word! Not intentionally, of course.

Had some time to kill, so, being me, I reached for the keyboard. WIP of choice is a short paranormal with enough of the details set that I can focus on getting some words down, though not too settled for fascinating twists to come out of left fiend and right brain and make me giggle as I type. Lovely way to spend a misty grey morning, playing in one's imagination.

Except...my characters have no names yet. Not real names, names that will communicate something to the reader. Can't just leave blank spaces in the text, so I picked a couple of placeholders, names I use all the time but can't include in submitted stories again. And maybe that was part of the problem--I have used those names before, so they look familiar--but it quickly turned into more than that.

Elizabeth Lowell uses "doubled and redoubled" in pretty nearly all of her stories. I use "susurration" about once a text. That's fine; I know I do it, I make sure it's only once, and beyond that, I don't worry. But today, it wasn't just feeling as though I'd written some word or phrase before. I'm sure I have! English has a lot of words, and I use more of them than many people, but there are ten thousand or so that compose most of everyone's writing. Today, it was the sequence that felt done and re-done.

No, not one of those scenes. I expect those to feel fairly familiar in certain aspects (there's some basic anatomical constants, and certain required elements). This was a scene I could have set practically anywhere, but for all my semi-exotic locale, it was just so easy to write...

Because I'd done it before.

Every scene has a natural rhythm. Every writer has favorite details that will quite naturally find their way into many if not all of her books. I am perhaps overfond of caffeine, plus, I really like men's hands, so it's not a rare thing to find the men in my stories holding coffee cups. I was actually sort of proud of myself when I realized this one was drinking tea, at just past dawn when my heroine sees him. It was different!

It really wasn't. I'd intended this scene to have a very specific tone, and planned a specific mid-point to set up the characters' interpersonal conflict--but what my fingers in their keyboard-rattling produced felt a lot like that last contemporary romance sale. Down to my heroine's incredulous, italicized thought.

Oh, hell and basketweaving. No, that's not the character's reaction; it's mine.

First time in a long time I've actually deleted pages worth of text. (Usually, I move it to another file, just in case. Hey, text memory is cheap!) Started the scene again, my turning points in mind, and this time, I wrote the thing from the hero's point of view just to make sure I couldn't write the same thing yet again; the hero would notice different details, have different reactions to them. I don't think I like it as much--his confusion plays better from outside than in--but at least it doesn't now feel like repetition.

Strange experience, though, repeating myself this way. I really thought my imagination was better than that. Different stories, different characters with different goals and attributes, so the similiarities are purely my perceptions and preferences--that's what they have in common, after all. (I know, some readers are thinking: Well, duh! All your stories do. You made them up. But my characters often have opinions I don't share. I'm not a very controlling creator. It's part of the fun!)

Next thing you know, I'm going to turn into one of those hacks who changes names and hair-colors and releases the result as a completely new piece. And when I do, I really will take myself to court. Only the charge might be criminal defacement of my own work. Or murder, if I snap completely, and that schizophrenia becomes rather more than a joke. Hmm. If personality A kills personality B, completely though non-corporeally...

Ooh, imagine the trial!

As always, wishing you (and you, and you!)
peace and x-rated joy

pxj