Been Caught Stealing

You know you're in trouble when Katie Couric makes you her personal bitch.

My friend Steph told me about Kaavya Viswanathan's interview on the Today show on Wednesday, of which I can't find a transcript. She said that Katie had her Serious Journalism on, confronting Viswanathan with multiple examples of how her book, How Opal Mehta got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life was essentially the same book as Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, both by Megan McCafferty.

Of course, I do not endorse plagiarism. It is wrong to steal ideas from other people. But, unlike the girl who ripped Beth, Kristen, et al. off word for word, I do think that Viswanathan didn't mean to steal the phrasing that McCafferty used. It doesn't make it right, of course, but I can kind of relate. This girl got a book deal at seventeen years old. She wrote most of her book during her first year at Harvard. At seventeen, you're still learning how to write, how to find your own style and voice. I still struggle with this even at twenty-four and after four years of college. When I read an author I like, my words kind of take on that cadence, my word choices tend to change a little. It is a subconscious thing, one that I don't mean to do. The difference is, at twenty-four, I know this about my writing, and know to go back over what I wrote and say, "Self, hmm, that sounds an awful lot like a Nine Inch Nails song, or a Tom Robbins novel. Rework it." When Viswanathan wrote her novel, she was seventeen. She was going to school at Harvard. She was under a world of pressure I can't even begin to fathom since nobody's offering me a book deal. (Assholes!) I think if I had the potential for huge fame, had a contract for $500,000, and writing 50 pages a day, I would lose that perspective and just try to be the best writer I could be. At seventeen, I probably would have fallen back on the style of someone I admired, and not had the time to go back and review it. If my editor wasn't familiar with the work, it would be easy for it to get in.

I don't think Katie Couric should have ridden this girl like a show pony on national television. I think she's young, I think she got blinded by the idea of being a Successful Writer, I think she got stressed and it got away from her. I think she should go away for a while. Maybe go to Emerson and develop a little more as a writer, and come back when she's got her own voice, or at least a better sense of revision.