Writers hurt when they can’t write. They may not realize it, but their behavior speaks volumes. Often, writers will go through a series of stages before they are ready to write again and these stages are similar to the Kübler-Ross stages of grief in psychology. In other words, when writers can’t write they grieve, so it makes sense that the stages of writer’s block would parallel the stages of grief.

Stage 1: Denial

“I don’t have writer’s block, I’m just really, really busy. So busy in fact, that I just can’t seem to find time to do all that writing that I know I should do. But just you watch: as soon as I’m not so busy anymore, I’ll be writing up a storm.”

There’s a reason why denial is the first stage of writer’s block. If you’re going to get past a writing impasse, you first have to identify that it’s there. The sooner you realize you have writer’s block, the sooner you can get over it and start writing again. By that same token, the longer you fail to recognize that your writing is blocked, the longer it takes to break through that barrier.

Stage 2: Anger

“Why can’t I think of any good ideas? Clearly there is someone at fault here. I’m supposed to be writing the greatest story/novel/poem EVER, but instead I’m sitting here staring at a blank screen. If I can’t think of something to write I’m going to punch my computer.”

First of all, don’t punch the computer. It’s not the computer’s fault you have writer’s block. Second, realize that anger is often a defense mechanism writers use to avoid writing. It’s easy for writers to get angry at the world around them for not letting them write, but the truth is, if they want to write, they find the time. Getting angry is just a way for writers to mask the truth: that they’re not writing. The cure is simple.  Just start writing. Before you know it, the anger will be gone and you’ll have a bunch of written pages in front of you.

Stage 3: Bargaining

“OK, I’ve got it all figured out. If I don’t write today, but I write twice as much tomorrow, it will even out, right? And if I don’t write tomorrow, then I’ll just write a triple dose the day after. Problem solved.”

Yeah, right. Bargaining is just a fancy word for denial. When you start making rationalizations about why you’re not writing or why you can’t write now, you’re simply denying the fact that you need to write. The truth is, paralysis breeds more paralysis and the more excuses you make for not writing, the harder it becomes to start writing again. Don’t let the cycle pick up momentum. Instead, sit down and write even if it’s just for fifteen minutes. Chances are, you’ll find that after those fifteen minutes you’ll be so engrossed, you’ll just keep writing. Remember, when it comes to any type of denial, you have to nip this sucker in the bud. Just sit down and write. No rationalizations allowed.

Stage 4: Depression

“What’s the point? Everything I write is lousy, so why bother? I’ll only have one good story/novel/poem in me anyway and once I use it up I’ll never write again. It’s pointless.”

Depression is probably the darkest stage of writer’s block because it is at this point that the writer begins to doubt his or her actual skill as a writer. Up until now, the focus of the writer’s inability to write has been external, but now the focus becomes internal. Freud said depression is anger directed toward the self, and I think there is some truth to that. The depression phase of writer’s block happens when writers let their frustrations with a certain project become personal. The trick is not to let writing become personal. You are you; you are not your work. And even if the worst-case scenario happens and the project you’re writing turns out to be terrible, don’t let it get you down.

Don’t say “I failed,” say “this failed,” then move on.

Stage 5: Acceptance

“Maybe I have writer’s block and maybe it’s awful, but there’s still something I can do about it. I can still sit down and write through it.”

Writer’s block is painful. Writers need to write and when they’re not writing, they hurt. This is true regardless of whether writers are cognizant of this hurt or completely oblivious. Writers need to write the way most other people need to breathe and when writers are not writing, they grieve. They mope. They wallow.

Oftentimes, all it takes is one small step, one tiny push in the right direction to get a writer back on track. I’ve found that for me, the best cure is acknowledging and then moving on. Sometimes the trickiest part of writer’s block is actually identifying that you’re hurting. Once you identify the pain behind the writer’s block, it’s just a matter of finding the cure. After all, if writer’s block is nothing more than pain from not writing, then the easiest way to get rid of it is to… write!

Take-Home Message: When you’re stuck in your writing, try making yourself write through the block.  One easy trick is to set a timer for 15 minutes and sit down with a pen and notebook (or at your computer if you prefer to type).  Even if you think you have nothing to say, force yourself to sit with your writing for the full 15 minutes.  I find that if I have to sit and there’s nothing to do but write in my notebook, I end up writing something just to pass the time.  By the time the fifteen minutes are up, I’m usually engrossed with what I’ve written and I keep writing.

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Every so often, writers hit a road block.  Sometimes we’re zipping along that writing highway and suddenly we take a detour and we’re off on a side road and boom!  We run into a herd of cattle hanging out in the middle of our path.  Sure, we could off-road it and drive through the pastures to avoid that stretch of road, but usually when we writers run into these blocks we do what anyone would do:

We hit the brakes.

The problem with hitting the brakes and stopping mid-journey is that it becomes that much more difficult to start up again.  It’s like Newton’s second law of motion:

Objects in motion tend to stay in motion and objects at rest tend to stay at rest, unless a force is acted on those objects.

The same is true for writing.  The longer a writer stays at rest and isn’t writing, the harder it is to get back on track.  What do you do when you do hit a road block?  What are your options when hitting the brakes becomes inevitable?  Here are a few tricks I do when I need to get back in the swing of things.

1)  Try a change of scenery.  Pack up your laptop or toss a notebook in your bag and head out the door.  Go somewhere you don’t usually go to write.  Don’t bring anything that might distract you.  Turn off the cell phone and if there’s free WiFi at the cafe, don’t login.  Pick up your pen or boot up your computer and just start writing.  Don’t judge, just write.

2)  Try setting a timer.  I like to add a little game of chance to this exercise: I roll a regular six-sided die and whatever number I get, I multiply it by ten and that’s how many minutes I have to sit with my writing.  This means I could be on the hook for as little as 10 minutes or as long as an hour.  Then for that stretch of time, all I have to do is sit with my writing.

Chances are, though, after I’ve sat for a minute or two, I start writing just to get over the boredom of sitting there.  Once I start writing–whether I rolled a 1 or a 6–before I know it, I’ve written several pages and clocked-in at least an hour of writing.

3)  Try some productive procrastination.  Productive procrastination is when you procrastinate on one task by doing another task that’s less pressing, but important nonetheless.  Example: instead of writing the next chapter in your novel, procrastinate by doing an outline for the latter half of your book or writing a character sketch for a new character.  The outline or character sketch are things you’d probably have to do anyway, so this way when you procrastinate you’re at least doing something productive.

What about you?  What do YOU do to get over writer’s block?

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As with any relationship, the more time you put into it, the more you will get out of it.  So it is with a writer’s love of words and literature.  Here are three ways you can feed that love and strengthen your relationship with your writing.  This weekend, choose one of these three options and put it into action.

3 Ways to Feed Your Love of Literature

1)  Keep a Reading Log.  Whether you use the good ol’ fashioned method and log the books you read in a notebook, or you prefer something more high-tech like a spreadsheet or an online community, it helps to log the books you read as you finish reading them.  I like to use GoodReads to keep track of books but that online community offers much more than just a tool for keeping a reading list.  I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of all it has to offer, but highly recommend it based on what I’ve seen so far.

2)  Keep a Journal or a Notebook.    I’ve been keeping a journal since I was ten years old (I still have that very first beat-up diary).  Lately, I’ve turned from keeping a journal to keeping a notebook, where I jot down story ideas, do writing exercises and brainstorm concepts I’m working on.  I find I think better with a pen in my hand so I like to work out ideas on paper and it helps to keep it all together in one notebook.

3)  Memorize a Piece of Writing that You Love.  When you memorize a piece of writing you can take it with you anywhere.  You can memorize anything you like, from poetry to monologues to favorite first and last lines.  Once you have something memorized, no one can take it from you and you can carry that writing with you everywhere you go.

Weekend Prompt:  Pick one of these three ways to feed your love of literature and do it.  If you need to go out and get a notebook to write in, treat yourself this weekend.  Or maybe you need to take a few minutes to set up an account on GoodReads and start logging your books.  Or perhaps you choose to memorize a favorite piece of writing, so spend the weekend solidifying the piece in your memory.

Remember, as with any love affair, you need to take some time to stoke the flames so they don’t go out.  This weekend, make it your mission to rekindle that love of literature you had when you first started writing.

This is a DIY MFA Manifesto for Why Writers Must Be Readers First

One year ago, I heard Richard Nash (Publisher of Red Lemonade) give a fascinating talk about how writers have to be readers.  His argument was that reading and writing are the opposite sides of the same interaction.  I remember thinking: OMG did he read my mind?  This is exactly the sort of stuff I’ve been obsessing over ever since I started DIY MFA.  In fact, after hearing Nash speak, I am completely convinced that reading can, in fact, change the world.

Some time ago, I posed the following statements for discussion among my writer friends.

Writing is the ultimate form of manipulation.
Reading is the supreme act of defiance.

Some people got the writing part of the equation right away.  When we write, we can control the words and how we express them to guide the reader in whatever direction we choose.  Writing–if you really think about it–is no more than a few inky scribbles on a page.  Lines and dots.  But if we’re strategic in how we use those lines and dots, we can actually put ideas into our reader’s head.  We can direct and manipulate what our reader imagines and how our reader responds.  Richard Nash had a great analogy for this concept in his talk: “Our words are hours that we can take up inside someone’s head.”

I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a powerful thing (and not a privilege to be taken lightly).

But what about the reading part?  How can reading be an act of defiance?  Some people might read to get the information or to figure what the author’s trying to say, and that’s fine.  But the moment you realize that everything the writer’s doing with his words is essentially an act of manipulation–a way of taking up real estate inside your brain–then you can start reading like a revolutionary.  All it takes is awareness, knowing that the writer’s doing some slight of hand tricks and is trying to direct your mind this way or that.  Once you’re aware of this manipulation, you can step back and decide if you actually want to be directed.

And as soon as you do that, you’ve become a rebel.  You’re fighting the machine.  You’re Reading.

And how, exactly, can Reading change the world?  That’s easy.  One of the biggest problems I see with the world is that everyone out there is trying to be a writer.  Everyone’s got an agenda; they’re trying to use their words and take up mental real estate and get people to listen to what they have to say.  The problem is, very few people out there put effort into Reading-with-a-capital-R.

I totally get why that happens, though.  Reading like that can be exhausting, sort of like watching a magic show and constantly trying to figure out how the magician pulled off the last trick. Our world is so saturated with information that it would be impossible to read like a revolutionary all the time.  We’d all lose our minds.  The trouble is, a lot of people have stopped Reading all together.  They just accept the information they see at face value and move on to the next thing.  I call this voluntary illiteracy.  Sure, they can read the lines and dots on the page, but are they really READING the meaning behind those scribbles?

In the end, Nash’s speech came down to one important point: “Writing and reading are behaviors.  Most people do both.”  I agree completely and would add only one thing:  To change the world, we need to do both and do them responsibly.

I thank you all for the privilege of letting me take up a small slice of your mental real estate.  Now go out there and do something amazing with your words.

Now I turn this question to all of you: Do you see yourself first as a writer or a reader?  Do you think it’s possible to be one without also being the other?

This week, as the build-up to Valentine’s Day saturates the world with candy hearts and long-stemmed roses, I thought it might be fun to think about how we found our love for writing.  I became a writer at this little school pictured on the left–The Caedmon School in New York City–and this is how it happened.

I was in first grade.  It was library time and I had slipped away from the picture book area to the section with floor-to-ceiling shelves that housed the “big kid books.”  I pulled a book from the shelf (I believe it was Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron) and stumbled my way through the first sentence or two.  Sliding the book back into place, it occurred to me: I could read this book.  I looked around the room and thought: I could read all of these books.  (OK, with some of them I might have needed some help sounding out the words, but still.)

That’s when panic struck.   If I read all the books in the school library, there would be no books left to read and I’d be bored forever.  You must understand, while the library was rather small–nothing more than a large room with bookshelves–to me it was gigantic.  I thought the books in the school library were all the books in the world.

Back in the first grade classroom, our teacher Miss H must have noticed that I was out of sorts because she asked me what was wrong.  I told her.

The next day, Miss H introduced a new activity for the classroom.  It was nothing more than a metal canister full of sharpened pencils and two plastic paper trays–one filled with blank lined paper, the other empty.  Miss H explained that we were to write stories on the blank paper and draw pictures for a cover, then place them in the empty tray.  Each day she would staple the pages together to make a book (a real book!) and she would read them to the class at story time.

Immediately my fears from the day before subsided.  Whenever I ran out of books to read, I could just write my own.  And then I could read them.  I would never be bored again! (Ah, the beauty of a first-grader’s logic.)

And this, my friends, is how I became a writer.  I fell in love with writing because I loved reading, first and foremost.  It was my love of literature, of getting lost in a story that pushed me to start writing in the first place.  I suppose it’s true what they say that all writers must be readers.  In my case, I was a reader first, and the writing came later.

How did you become a writer?  Was there one particular incident, person or place that helped spark your writing?  Please share your story in the comments!

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This week we talked about beginnings and how to make them effective.  Now it’s your turn to apply what you learned to your own Work In Progress (WIP).  Using the Five Promises we discussed in Wednesday’s post, rework the opening of your WIP to incorporate as many of those promises as you can.

Weekend Prompt:

Step 1–Look at the first five pages of your WIP and answer the following questions.  As you consider each question, highlight or underline the passage in your piece that addresses it.  This is concrete evidence that you have made each promise to your reader.

Five Questions:

1)  Do you give your reader a character to root for?  Does this character appear in the first 5 pages?

2)  Does the narration have a distinct voice (either the voice of the character telling the story or the voice of the narrator)?

3)  Do you introduce the world of your story?  Do you avoid overloading the readers with details and give just enough to establish that world?

4)  Is there a problem that the main character faces?  Is that problem clear in the first 5 pages?

5)  Is there an event that sets the story in motion?  Does this event happen within the first five pages (or at the very least the first chapter)?

Step 2–Bonus Question: If you chose to break any of the five promises (i.e. you answered “No” to one or more of the above questions), did you do so with an artful reason for it?  What is that reason?

Step 3–Identify which area(s) is lacking in your opening.  Maybe you introduce the main character but the voice of the narrator is wishy-washy or the setting of the story is unclear.  Maybe there’s no clear event that sets the story in motion.  Whatever is missing from your opening, brainstorm some ways to add those elements into the first 5 pages (or if not the first 5 pages, at least the first chapter).  If you’ve answered all these promises to your reader, think about which promises you could emphasize more.  Once you’ve identified what’s missing in your opening and have brainstormed how to fix it, apply those changes to your story.

Why do we care about the first 5 pages?  While there are no hard-and-fast rules about answering all these promises in exactly 5 pages, it makes sense to do so whenever possible.  Why?  Because the first five pages is often all you get to present your story when you begin the query process.  Many agents request queries with either the first chapter or the first five pages as a sample (so the can get a sense for your writing beyond the query letter).

It’s not mandatory to answer all five promises within this rigid set of pages–the writing police won’t come get you if you miss a promise or two–but it would serve you well to answer as many promises as possible.  Of course, if fitting all five promises into the first five pages forces you to perform outrageous feats of verbal acrobatics and sacrifice the quality of your writing, then don’t do it.  But if you can answer these questions as early as possible in your story, you are more likely to hook your reader and get them to keep reading.

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Starting a novel or short story is like making a promise to the reader.  You set up rules and expectations that your readers will rely on as they read your piece.  You take your readers by the hand and guide them into your story.  You develop a trust-relationship with the reader.

Delaying or changing these elements on your reader will create tension.  While that might get the reader’s attention, it will also mean you’ll have to work that much harder to gain back the reader’s trust during the rest of the story.  Here are the five essential promises you make to your reader right at the beginning of your piece.  Most writers will fulfill these promises within the first five pages of a novel (or five paragraphs, in a short story).

1) You promise a character.

From the start your readers will want to know who they’re supposed to root for.  Sometimes writers will artfully delay the appearance of the main character in order to create anticipation or to reflect the character’s personality, but this is very unusual.  In most cases, the protagonist usually appears in the first chapter, and is often the very first character the reader sees.

A great example of a delayed main character from children’s literature is The Wainscott Weasel by Tor Seidler, in which the protagonist does not appear at all in the first chapter.  Another example, of course, is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, in which Elizabeth’s ultimate love interest–Mr. Darcy–doesn’t appear until well into the story.  In the case of both books, these characters are introverted and shy.  By holding the characters back and making the reader wait for them, the authors show us this facet of their personalities.

2) You promise the voice.

The voice of the narration is central to establishing the mood of the story.  Compare the opening sentences to the following novels and notice the different moods that they convey.

“Everyone thinks it was because of the snow.  And in a way, I suppose that’s true.”
~Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to totally suck.”
~M.T. Anderson, Feed

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Point of view is also central to the voice and mood.  Notice that in the three above examples, all of the narrators were in the first person, which allows us to hear the character’s voice directly.  There are other scenarios where the narrator is not the protagonist, but the voice of the protagonist still comes through loud and clear in dialogue.  And, of course, there are instances when the narrator herself has a distinct and unique voice, as in this example.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

The ironic tone of this opening line shows us right away that this is no passive narrator.  She’s spunky and has as much spark and wit as the protagonist.

3) You promise the world.

Promise the world?  As in the whole world?  It might sound huge but it’s not just any world you’re promising, it’s your world, the world of your book.  It doesn’t matter what genre you’re writing, you have to let the reader into your world and it must feel real.  This applies whether you’re writing a contemporary story set in a average suburb, or some elaborate fantasy story set in another dimension.  The reader needs to believe in your world and the best way for you to make that happen is for you to believe in it yourself.

Another thing to remember about promising your world is that when it comes to detail, a little goes a long way.  Writers are often tempted to give as much detail about setting as possible, thinking that the more details they share the more real the world will become.  This is especially true for fantasy stories, where the writer may worry that the reader won’t “get” the setting if they don’t describe every last inch.

The truth is, readers are smart and often a few well-placed details will carry more weight than long passages of description.  Just as readers trust the writer to give them a world that feels real, the writer must trust the readers to suspend their disbelief and invest in that world.

4) You promise a problem.

From the first page, your reader has to know that there’s a problem the character is facing.  Whether that problem is explicit (like the family’s financial state in Pride and Prejudice) or a mystery (like in If I Stay) we know from the first moment that the character is facing some difficulty, some problem.  This promise is essential because whatever this problem is, it will be crucial in establishing the central conflict for your story.

Note that while this problem that appears early in the story does not necessarily have to be the central conflict.  In Pride and Prejudice, the initial problem is the family’s financial situation, but as we read on we discover that the central conflict actually lies in the relationship between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy and that initial problem merely contributes to the conflict.  The initial financial problem sets events in motion and eventually we discover the central conflict.  After all, if the Bennet family were not in such a serious financial position, Mrs. Bennet would not have pushed her daughters to meet husbands and most likely Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy would not have been thrown together, thus leading to their romance.

5) You promise an event.

Every book or story opens with some sort of event that kick-starts the story.  In If I Stay, the event is huge and turns the characters’ lives upside-down.  In Catcher in the Rye, Holden leaves boarding school and that sets off the chain of events from where the story unfolds.  In Feed, we start by going to the moon to have fun and the story unravels from there.  In Pride and Prejudice, the wealthy bachelor Mr. Bingly moves to the neighborhood, raising all sorts of gossip among the neighbors.  Whether the event simply nudges the story into motion or gives it a sharp shove, there must be an event early on that gets the story started.

Your reader will be waiting for that event, so as a writer you need to follow through.  If you delay that event for too long, your reader might lose interest or, worse yet, stop reading altogether.  The sooner you set your story in motion, the sooner you can hook your reader.

In the end, it all comes down to building a level of trust with your reader.  When you deliver on these promises, you’re showing your readers that they are in good hands and that you know what you’re doing.  Then when you take risks in your writing with an artful purpose, you’re also letting the readers know that you trust them as well.  Ultimately, the reader-writer relationship is one of trust.  Readers trust writers not to go back on their promises or play tricks on them and writers must trust readers to be smart and understand what they’re doing.

On January 28th, my son was born and all last week, life has been a celebration firsts.  First day home from the hospital.  First feeding.  First diaper changed.  In honor of all these firsts, I thought I would make “Beginnings” this week’s theme for DIY MFA.  Later this week, I’ll discuss the ins and outs of crafting a successful opening to a story but today I wanted to ask all of you:

What’s your favorite story beginning or opening line?  Why?

A Few of My Favorite Beginnings:

“The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.”
~Flannery O’Connor
A Good Man Is Hard to FInd

I love this opening line for because in just eight words, Flannery O’Connor manages to establish all the important elements of the story.  First of all, we get the character–a grandmother who clearly has ideas of her own and from the get-go we know these ideas are going to make trouble for everyone in the story.  We also get a conflict.  It’s implied in that first sentence that some group of people is going to Florida but the grandmother does not want to go.  Right away, we know that this grandmother character is going to be fighting against everyone to get her way.  We also get a sense of the setting of the story.  This is a “road trip story” and we know that because it’s implied that the grandmother and others are headed to Florida.

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind
And another
His mother called him “WILD THING!”
And Max said “I’LL EAT YOU UP!”
So he was sent to bed without eating anything.
~Maurice Sendak
Where the Wild Things Are

Again, this opening scene gives us a character (Max) and right away we know what he wants, what his goal is (to be a wild thing).  The conflict is that the people around Max don’t want him to be wild and when he acts wild, he gets “sent to bed without eating anything.”  That event of being sent to bed without dinner is what sets off his journey to the place where the Wild Things are.  In just a few lines, we learn a lot about this protagonist, the conflict of the story and the inciting incident that sets the story in motion.

Now, you tell me: What’s your favorite story opener or first line?  Why does it work so well?

You had questions… now I have answers!  As we wrap up the Legally Speaking post series, I’ll address the questions that have come up during the past few weeks.

Can I use the name of a deceased person as a character name in my “based on a true story” work of fiction?

Depends on who the dead person is.  If we’re talking about a historical figure who’s long-since deceased (Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Henry VIII) chances are you don’t have an estate of that person who will sue you if you take creative liberties with that character.  If on the other hand, your character is more recently deceased, you have to worry about what the legal world calls “Rights of Publicity,” which falls outside my husband’s area of expertise.

Can you write a fictional story based on factual events and people as a jumping off point?

Certainly!  It’s called historical fiction.  Sure, if you rewrite history defaming certain public figures you might run into trouble with their estates, but if the factual events and people are just a jumping-off point for the rest of the story, you shouldn’t have any problem.  Think, for instance, of the movie Forrest Gump where the protagonist meets several presidents and John Lennon.  He even “helps” Lennon write the lyrics to the song Imagine and teaches Elvis how to dance.  If you’re writing a story that is embedded in a historical time period, it makes sense that people and events of that time would appear in your story.

Is there a disclaimer you need to add if you portray a factual person in a negative light within your fictional story?

The safest bet if you want to portray a factual person in a negative light (especially if you’re taking creative liberties with that person) is to change the name.  If the person is really well-known, chances are readers will pick up the reference.

Can you mention brand names and actual businesses in fiction and other creative works (both as parody and not)? For instance, can you have a character shop at 7-Eleven? Can you make a joke about Lifesavers?

As far as casual mention of brand names in fiction (like having a character order a Diet Coke or listen to an iPod), my understanding is that this is OK.  The main thing you should consider as a writer is whether using certain brand names will date your book.  Some brands have been around for a while and are here to stay so if you mention them, it won’t immediately date your story.  But other brands (particularly as far as technology goes) are constantly changing and mentioning the brand will definitely lock your story into a particular place in time.  If you’re writing a book that takes place in a specific time period, then dating the story can work in your favor but if you want a more timeless feel, you’ll want to watch out for mentioning brands or types of technology that will date your story.

In terms of parody, as we mentioned in the Infringement, Fair Use and Derivative Works post you can  imitate or mention existing stories or brands for humorous effect.  What you need to be careful of is not to defame that brand.  For instance, in the Coming to America  example, the restaurant McDowell’s is a parody of the McDonald’s brand but the humor comes from the fact that the fake brand is actually almost identical to the existing brand and the owner of McDowell’s continues to insist that the brands are totally different.  If, on the other hand, McDowell’s were a strip club that also happened to serve burgers and fries, that could be considered a defamation because it’s taking a family-friendly restaurant and turning it into something quite the opposite.

How does copyright work on the internet? On blogs for example? What is the “copyright” status of a blog or other internet-published piece of writing?

Generally, when you post something on a blog, it’s considered “published.”  This is why it’s important to be careful about what you give away on blogs for free (i.e. posting large chunks of your novel or entire short stories).  At the same time, having published something on your blog does not preclude you from publishing it elsewhere as well, as long as you make it clear to the entity publishing your work that it has already appeared on your blog.

As far as the copyright status of work on a blog, the minute you hit that publish button and your post or story or piece of writing goes live, you’ve got copyright.  And what’s nice about publishing on a blog is that you have a time-stamp and date associated with when your piece was posted so if any question comes up regarding your copyright, you have that record already.  Of course, if you want to sue for damages, you will do better to have actually registered the copyright to your work with the copyright office, but because of the disposable and ephemeral nature of blog posts, it is almost certainly not cost-effective.

Worst case scenario, if someone takes your content and tries to pass it off as their own, you have proof from your blog time-stamp that your content was here first.  You can contact the offending party and just ask them to take the work down from their site.  Public shaming is also an effective tactic.

As our “Legally Speaking” series winds down, I thought I would share some links and resources where you can find more information about copyright and legal issues for writers.  This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it can certainly help you get started.

Law School Clinical Programs

In addition to the resources and links listed below, one great resource where you may be able to find legal information and maybe even get legal advice is through law school clinics.  A lot of law schools offer what they call “clinical programs” where advanced (2nd & 3rd year) law students get hands-on experience working in specific areas of law out in “the field” as it were.  The people who qualify for the help at these clinics get the representation for free.

Also, while the clinics are manned mostly by law students, that can actually work to your advantage because these soon-to-be lawyers are often extremely motivated (nothing like the motivation of grades and course credit).  Of course, while the legwork is done mostly by law students, they ARE overseen by actual lawyers (professors or lawyers volunteering their time), so there would be actual lawyers on hand to oversee your case, if it got to the point where it was necessary.

If you live in an area where there is a university law school nearby, it is worthwhile to check that school’s website and see if they offer any clinical programs for IP (Intellectual Property) Law.

Links and Resources

•  Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts: New York organization dedicated to helping artists with legal issues.  The website has good resources even for those not in New York and there are similar organizations throughout the US. http://www.vlany.org/

•  US Copyright Office: Federal agency tasked with registering US copyrights.  Also good information about US copyright law.  http://www.copyright.gov

•  World Intellectual Property Association: UN agency tasked with developing a balanced and accessible international intellectual property system. It also administers several international treaties related to IP law.  There is good information about IP laws in many countries here. http://www.wipo.int/portal/index.html.en

•  Cornell Law School’s Copyright portal: more geared to legal questions, but has information accessible to a non-legal audience.  http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/copyright

•  Creative Commons: an organization dedicated to promoting freely available “public domain” licenses. Wikipedia uses Creative Commons licenses. http://creativecommons.org/

•  The Authors Registry: an organization that is a not-for-profit clearinghouse for payments to authors, receiving royalties from organizations and distributing them to U.S. authors. http://www.authorsregistry.org/index.htm

•  The Authors Guild: A membership organization that advocates for author-friendly copyright policies and provides legal advice. http://www.authorsguild.org/