I think that kind of thing is very very rare, though; you can't be worrying about it with everything you write.
I've just been really worried that I'll unconsciously plagiarize something and be hauled off to Author's Jail and forever known as the
Plagiarist.
You're probably right, though. Thanks for the advice.
Seems like the use of a palm, fist, or hefty stick might be more appropriate....
Oh, in the story Tog, who does the swiping, is supposed to be a goblin disguised as a human boy. His goblin nails are rather sharp and he's much stronger than the average child. Thanks for the suggestion which I might take up in the final draft.
has there actually been an occasion on which you looked back at your work, and discovered that an extended passage -- a long paragraph or more -- was a word-for-word duplicate of someone else's work?
There have been passages that worried me. I read so prolifically that I no longer remember much of what I've read. Like for my recent English paper I wrote In fact, he goes so far as to share the confidence that he is a Mason. If Fortunato believed Montresor to hold a grudge against him it is unlikely he would have revealed this fact...Fortunato must have suffered terrible mental agony in the interval of time it took Montresor to wall him up. Rereading this I had a sense of deja vu that I'd seen the words before but I can't remember where or even if I'm just imagining the similarity to anything I've read. In a childrens' book I'm writing the main character feels uneasy about the part of town he's entered -Tog lived in the bad part of town. Roger looked around uneasily at the rundown buildings, the bums sitting at street corners, the barking dogs behind chain link fences. Tog didn't seem bothered by any of it. When a vicious looking dog lunged at him, Tog swiped it with his fingernails. The dog ran away whimpering. Again I'm struck by a sense of deja vu. Do the passages in question ring any bells? Should I rewrite them?
Also I'm no expert on the subject but I have read about unconscious plagiarism. Isaac Asimov said he did it early in his career. In one of his writing books Lawrence Block talks about a friend who accidentally plagiarized the plot from another story.
Yes, you are right, it's plagiarize. I sometimes visually elide words which I don't realize until I've used spellcheck.
I have a question about accidental plagarism. How do those of you who are writers avoid it? I am wary of submitting any of my writings for fear I'll have unwittingly plagarized passages from someone else's work. It's driving me nuts because every time I reread my work I feel like I haven't written it - that it's somehow foreign to me. I don't know whether I'm being paranoid or have a valid concern. I don't want to be known as a plagarist nor do I want to steal another's work.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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