A few things, some nice, some not so nice.

I am back at work in my cool cellar/study, just the right temperature when it's 27 degrees outside. Since the lovely news about the Binnacle Ultra-Short comp, I have done a u-turn on my previous decision to stop writing flash fiction. The universe seems to be telling me that I'm pretty good at it, and I do love writing flash, so I'm going to keep on doing it.

I started today by writing a 25-word piece for Hint Fiction, a new anthology forthcoming from W.W Norton. If you link to the Hint Fiction page from your blog, they allow you to submit three pieces instead of two. Details:

Tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2010, W.W. Norton will publish an anthology of Hint Fiction. What is Hint Fiction? It’s a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story. The thesis of the anthology is to prove that a story 25 words or less can have as much impact as a story 2,500 words or longer. The anthology will include between 100 and 150 stories. We want your best work.

It’s possible to write a complete story in 25 words or less — a beginning, middle, end — but that’s not Hint Fiction.

The very best Hint Fiction stories can be read many different ways.

We want stories we can read again and again and never tire of. Stories that don’t pull any punches. Stories that make us think, that evoke some kind of emotional response.

I heartily agree that "a story 25 words or less can have as much impact as a story 2,500 words or longer"! I've written one, will try and write some more. Have a go. Read the full guidelines here.

Now for the not so nice part. A few weeks ago I was the victim of a plagiarist, who took all of the aspects of one of my published stories that made it my unique creation, added a few things of his own, passed it of as his, and not only was it published but it won a prize. I know this person, he had been a trusted writing colleague. The person in question did not admit any wrongdoing, but the competition removed his "story" from their site. He has done this before and since, to others I know and perhaps more that we are not aware of.

It was, to say the least, a deeply distressing experienceI felt physically ill, couldn't write for quite a long time afterwards.

Several of us involved in this incident decided to do something. It isn't possible to safeguard your work from predators like this, unless you simply decide never to submit a story again. Once your work is out there, there is not much to be done. But... it is most certainly worth discussing what plagiarism in fiction means, and how we can make sure that we are not crossing the line between being "inspired by" - which to me is an essential aspect to creative writing - and theft.

To that end, Jane Smith on the wonderful How Publishing Really Works blog is having an Anti-Plaguarism Day on Friday July 15th. She says:

On that day I’m going to blog about plagiarism, and I’d like you to do the same: on your own blogs, on message boards, on Facebook or Twitter: anywhere where writers congregate. If you don’t have a blog of your own but would like to get involved then email your piece to “hprw at tesco dot net”, with a subject line of “HPRW anti-plagiarism day”, and I’ll post it here. Send me links to your blog posts or message board discussions and I’ll edit them into my piece.

You can write about anything you like, so long as it’s based on plagiarism: what it is, what’s allowed and what’s not, famous cases of plagiarism, how it feels to be plagiarised, and what effects plagiarism can have (on both of the writers involved): anything which is plagiarism-related, honest, well-researched and properly informed.

Read her full post here. Let's inform ourselves so that if anything like this happens to anyone, we can spot it, stop it, be aware. I hope no-one ever has to go through this.

Back to more positive things! I am off to write more Hint Fiction.