Nice but Not Gentle

There were several new people at my critique group last week. We also had one person who had attended before but was reading for the first time. He asked us to be gentle in critiquing his work, and I replied, “That isn’t how this group works. We’re nice but not gentle.”

Nice people want to help others, and sometimes that’s inconsistent with being gentle. If you saw someone choking and you knew how to use the Heimlich maneuver, wouldn’t you choose effective over gentle? Those abdominal thrusts may not be comfortable for the person who is choking, but they can save that person’s life.

Gentle doesn’t work for a critique group, either. At least not for one that wants to develop its members as writers. I attend the Highland Writers’ Group because I’m looking to improve my craft. If I just wanted to read my work or interact with other writers, I’d find a different forum.

That doesn’t mean we tear each other’s work apart. As my statement said, we do try to be nice. If we can’t give criticism constructively, we don’t give it at all. And we do ease people into the group. The feedback we give a new writer may be quite different from what we say to an established one. But if we can’t give constructive criticism, it isn’t a critique group.

I’m going to repeat a couple of points that I made in a March 4, 2013 post. Those of you who have heard this before will have to bear with me.

Experience has taught me two things about responding to writing critiques. First, if I want to improve my craft, I can't be sensitive. Second, if I want to improve my craft, I must be sensitive. The definition to avoid is "quick to take offense; touchy." The one to embrace is "responsive to external conditions or stimulation." (These two definitions of "sensitive" come from the fourth edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.)

Several years ago, I was writing an overtly Christian novel and sharing it with the Highland Writers' Group for critique. I found myself constantly irritated by the criticism from one member. He appeared to be antagonistic to Christianity, and most of his comments showed that he misunderstood what I was trying to say in this sentence or that paragraph. My immediate reaction was, "You aren't my audience. Christians will know what I mean."

Then I went home and thought about it. Yes, he wasn't my intended audience, and maybe a Christian audience would understand what I wrote. But maybe it wouldn't. Equally important, what if a non-Christian picked up the book and read it? Better to reword a few paragraphs than to risk being misunderstood.

This has been a theme in the critique experiences I have found most helpful. If I quickly take offense and discount the criticisms, I don't learn anything. But if I think about what was said and respond offensively rather than defensively, my writing is the better for it. Yes, I still reject some of the suggestions I receive, but not until I have considered them carefully.

Nobody seemed to take offense at any of the critiques given on Saturday, and that’s good. But if they had, I wouldn’t count it as a failure.

Because sometimes we have to be nice but not gentle.

Photos are Creative Works

This isn’t the blog post I intended to write this week. I had a totally different topic in mind. So why am I postponing it for a week or two or possibly three? I found the perfect picture to use with it, but the photo is copyrighted by someone other than me. So Friday I sent a request for permission to use the photograph, and I’m deferring the post in the meantime.

But that makes this a good time to remind my readers—especially those with their own blogs—that the copyright laws apply to photos, too. And just because you can find it on the Internet doesn’t mean you have permission to use it.

The following post originally appeared on the Hoosier Ink website on October 25, 2012. I have made a few very minor edits.

Photos Are Creative Works

As with anything else, photographs must have some minimum creativity to enjoy copyright protection. But almost every photograph qualifies.*

Consider the above picture of Autumn colors, which I took in October 2012 at Crapo Park in Burlington, Iowa. I didn’t create the subject, nor did I stage the picture. But I did choose the camera settings and select the scene that filled the frame. I even get credit for being in the right place at the right time.

Then there’s the second picture, which I used in my September 27, 2012  Hoosier Ink post on art versus science. The posed subject may not look very creative, but the copyright laws say it is. The first holder has a candlestick in it to demonstrate its function, and the second is empty so the viewer can get a better idea of its design. All purposefully done to make a point.

Because both photos meet the standards for creativity, you can’t use either without my permission.

There is a distinction between natural subjects and posed pictures, however. I can stop you from using my photo of the leaves in Crapo Park, but I can’t prevent you from going there at the same time next year and taking your own photograph. With a posed picture, I can keep you from copying the pose as well as the actual photograph. That’s because the subject is also a result of my creativity.

As with my photographs, yours are also copyrighted. That’s a good thing.

Because it isn’t just our writing that is creative.

__________

*For an in-depth discussion of the elements that make a photograph creative, see Mannion v. Coors Brewing Co., 377 F.Supp.2d 244 (S.D.N.Y. 2005).

Chasing Details

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I am working on a middle grade historical novel about the Japanese American incarceration during World War II. My research included numerous memoirs and other non-fiction accounts. While they agree on the broad picture, they do not always agree on the details. So what’s a writer to do?   

Here’s one example.

My protagonist lives in Berkeley, California when the war breaks out, and she and her mother are sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, California. The sources agree that the Japanese Americans at Tanforan ate all their meals at a mess hall. But they don’t agree about who provided the dishes.

A minor point, you say? Yes, and the story certainly doesn’t hinge on its accuracy. Still, I’d like to get it right if I can. When I read a story and notice an inaccuracy, it makes me less likely to read anything else by that author. An error in my story will bother me, but it may also shrink the audience for my next book.

I purchased and read three memoirs and one near-memoir from people who were incarcerated at Tanforan. All of them mention their first meal there. In Citizen 13660, Miné Okubo says she picked up a plate, knife, and fork at the dishware counter in the mess hall and wiped her plate clean with her handkerchief. Toyo Suyemoto agrees and notes that she had to wipe off the particles of food clinging to the dishes (I Call to Remembrance: Toyo Suyemoto’s Years of Internment).

But Yoshiko Uchida and Haruko Obata both remember bringing plates and utensils to the mess hall. The Uchida family’s dishes were in their as yet undelivered luggage, so the three women took their place in line each “clutching a plate and silverware borrowed from friends who had already received their baggage” (Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family). Obata remembers, “At the dining room we had to bring our own plate, knife, fork, and spoon” (Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment). [Emphasis added.]

I could leave those details out, but they provide atmosphere and show the conditions the residents lived in. Either they brought (and washed) their own dishes, or they ate from ones that had food remnants clinging to them. One way or the other, adding the details shows that the Japanese Americans weren’t living a life of luxury at a vacation spa. (Believe it or not, that’s what some Caucasians claimed.)

So what do I do? The best I can, which in this case means to evaluate the sources and make an educated guess.

The accounts from people who were there are evenly split. But since memories fade over time, the account closest to the events is often the most accurate. Okubo’s book was published in 1946—four years after the events—while Uchida’s wasn’t published until 1982, and the other two were published even later. On the other hand, Uchida kept diaries most of her life and, although I don’t know whether she kept one at this time, she may have pulled her description from a contemporaneous account. So it is still a stalemate.

Fortunately, there is other evidence. Two photographs taken by Dorothea Lange on June 16, 1942 show people waiting in line to enter the mess hall. Lange’s own caption for the photo at the top of this post reads, in part:

Supper time! Meal times are the big events within an assembly center. This is a line-up of evacuees waiting for the B shift at 5:45 P.M. They carry with them their own dishes and cutlery in bags to protect them from the dust.

If you look closely, you will see some of the white cloth bags she refers to.

Another piece of evidence is the official “Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Ancestry.” These instructions told the Japanese Americans what to pack, and the list included “sufficient knives, forks, spoons, plates, bowls, and cups for each member of the family.”

Looking at the evidence as a whole, my best guess is that Uchida and Obata were correct and the Japanese Americans arriving at Tanforan had to use their own dishes.

Am I sure that I have it right? No. And there are other arguments for and against that I don’t have space to go into here. But my job is to do the best I can.

Because even little details can be important at times, and sloppy research is as bad as none at all.

__________

The photograph at the head of this post shows a mess line at Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, California. It was taken by Dorothea Lange on June 16, 1942 as part of her official duties as an employee of the United States government. Because it is a government document, the photo is in the public domain.

Pronunciation Dilemma

I have a dilemma.

My current work-in-progress is a middle grade (4^th-6^th) historical novel that tells the story of a half-Japanese girl living in California during World War II. I need to use Japanese names and a few Japanese words to make it authentic. When I read, I pronounce words in my head, and I assume many other readers do, too. I’ve always been lousy at foreign languages, but I am doing my best to learn basic Japanese pronunciation using Internet and print/CD resources.

But my middle-grade readers aren’t going to do that, so I am trying to make it as easy as possible for them to hear the words correctly in their heads. It won’t happen with every word, and even when I can get close, I’m not looking for exact pronunciation. Some of the tongue and mouth actions that form the sounds are unfamiliar to Americans, and even the various sources I’ve listened to pronounce the same word differently, much like in the U.S. (Do you say tomayto or tomahto?) Still, I’d like to get as close as I can.

I have the biggest difficulty when two vowels are next to each other. Unlike English, in Japanese you get only one vowel to a syllable. That means contiguous vowels are in different syllables and are pronounced separately. At least that’s the theory. Americans have a tendency to run syllables together, and many of the Japanese pronunciations I’ve heard do the same thing. (The speakers don’t identify their nationality, however, so they may be American speakers.) It’s even more complicated when the vowels aren’t pronounced as an American reader expects. My natural inclination is to pronounce the name “Keiko” as Kee-koh, when it is really more like Keh-ee-koh.

I’ve gone out of my way to choose names without two adjacent vowels, but I can’t avoid all potential mispronunciation or I’d run out of names before characters.

Avoidance is also not a solution for double-voweled words like “Issei” and “Nisei,” which run rampant throughout my manuscript. They were common terms among the Japanese Americans and highlighted a distinction that was extremely important at the time. “Issei” were the first generation in America, and U.S. law denied these immigrants the right to become citizens. “Nisei” were the second generation, and they were citizens by virtue of being born here. I have to use those words.

I think I’ve done a good job incorporating the meanings of Japanese words into the flow of the story, but I’m also planning on putting a glossary at the end of the book. And that’s where the dilemma comes in. If I add pronunciation to the glossary, do I use the technical Japanese phonics, the formal American pronunciation key, or an informal one close to the actual sound?

Take “Nisei.” From what I’ve been reading, the formal Japanese pronunciation should be broken down to something like nee-seh-ee for the three syllables ni-se-i. The online dictionaries all use nē’sā (the formal American pronunciation key indicating that it is pronounced as two syllables with a long e and a long a) or the less formal nee-sey. When I hear it, I hear nee-say. So what do I do?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

__________

The Japanese characters at the top of this post spell “Nisei” according to Wikipedia.

Drinking Starbucks' Coffee

When I go to writers’ conferences and identify myself as a lawyer, I often get asked if it is okay to use brand names in a novel. My answer? As long as it isn’t defamatory, it is usually fine. Here is the rest of my answer, which is reprinted from the April 22, 2010 post I wrote for the Hoosier Ink blog.*

Drinking Starbucks’ Coffee

I drink a lot of coffee, although not usually from Starbucks. But my characters go there. That’s because it is a nationally-recognized name, and I like to use some recognizable brands to give my stories a sense of authenticity.

But I know writers who are scared of using brand names. They think it will violate copyright or trademark laws, or they don’t want to use the ® symbol because it can interrupt the flow of the story.

I don’t worry about any of that.

You can’t copyright names, so copyright law doesn’t apply. You can trademark names, and Starbucks is a registered trademark. However, trademarks have a specific, limited purpose, so the protection the owner gets is much narrower than with copyrights.

Trademarks protect against consumer confusion over the source of a product or service. Consumers use recognizable names and symbols to tell them that they are getting a certain quality or a product with particular characteristics. When you see the Nike swoosh on a pair of shoes, you expect them to last for a while. When a counterfeiter prints the swoosh on shoddy-quality shoes, people are mislead. That harms both the consumer (who is not getting what he or she expected) and Nike (who could lose sales to the counterfeiter and suffer harm to its reputation when the shoes fall apart).

Your characters can drink 7-Up without worrying about trademark infringement. No one is going to go out and buy counterfeit 7-Up based on your novel, nor will readers assume that the makers of 7-Up are connected with your book. You don’t have to call it lemon-lime soda.

A brand name can lose its trademark protection if consumers use it generically for any brand of the same type of product. After people started referring to all tissues as kleenex and to photocopies made on any brand photocopier as xeroxes, the owners of those trademarks spent a lot of money educating consumers on the proper use of the terms. That’s why brand owners would like you to use the ® symbol. But you aren’t required to. If you want to help trademark owners protect their property and you think “the real thing” will add authenticity, just capitalize Coke. 

So let your characters drink Starbucks’ coffee if they want to. Or 7-Up. Or Coke. (There seems to be a lot of drinking in this post. Maybe I should send my characters to the bathroom more often.)
__________

* http://hoosierink.blogspot.com/2010/04/drinking-starbucks-coffee.html

Conferenced Out

I make it a practice to attend two or more writers’ conferences a year, with at least one of them lasting several days. This year I attended one multi-day conference, two single-day conferences, and a workshop. The workshop was held during the summer, but the conferences came on three successive weekends. They started with the multi-day conference on September 25-28, followed by Saturday conferences on October 4 and 11. So is it any surprise that I titled this post, “Conferenced Out”?

 

 

Not that I’m complaining. I get several benefits from attending writers’ conferences. My main reason for going is an educational one—to learn how to improve my writing. But achieving this goal can be tricky at times, especially when you’ve attended as many conferences as I have. After all, how many times can I hear the same material on dialogue without getting bored? The second and even the third time may reinforce what I heard—and possibly forgot—the first time, but there is a limit.







At least that’s what I’ve grown to expect. There are exceptions, however. As I looked at the offerings for the first breakout session at the Indiana Writers’ Consortium Creative Writing Conference, only one appeared to be relevant to my own writing, and it was on dialogue. I attended reluctantly—and enjoyed myself immensely. None of the principles were new to me, but Kate Collins, who writes the Flower Shop Mysteries series, knows how to keep her audience interested. And for writers who are less familiar with the principles of writing dialogue, it was educational as well as entertaining.

 

 

The second breakout session created a different dilemma, presenting me with two choices that interested me. I had to choose, and the one I chose was good. But I still wonder what I missed from the other class.

 

That’s a problem with any conference that offers separate breakout sessions, and I’m glad the Indiana SCBWI “Go North for Nonfiction” conference wasn’t set up that way. As I looked through the presentations, I realized that there was only one I was willing to miss. Fortunately, there was only one choice at a time, and I didn’t have to miss anything.

 

The second reason I attend writers’ conferences is to network. Meeting new people is always a good use of my time.

 

Finally, I go to sell my books. “Sell my books” has two meanings here. Some conferences, including the multi-day ACFW Conference, give attendees a chance to meet with editors and agents and pitch a current manuscript. But all conferences give me the opportunity to sell copies of my published books to readers. Sometimes this is a direct benefit, such as having copies in the conference bookstore or having my own book sales table, and sometimes it is simply a marketing opportunity to talk the books up and pass out postcards or bookmarks advertising them.

 

So yes, I’m ready for a rest before I attend another writers’ conference. But when the next one comes around, I’ll be crouched at the starting line, ready for the flag to fall.

 



Work for Hire: When the Writer Isn't the Author

As I promised last week, I am reprinting a post that I wrote for the “Hoosier Ink” blog on November 25, 2010.* The post, titled “When the Writer Isn’t the Author,” discusses when something is a work for hire and what the legal implications are.

 

One additional note. A freelancer can assign/sell/give the copyright to the person who commissioned the work even if it doesn’t qualify as a work for hire. For practical purposes, the results may be the same, but the labels are still different.

 

When the Writer Isn’t the Author

 

“I wrote it, so I get the copyright. Don’t I?”

 

Usually, but not always.

 

The author receives the copyright, but the author and the writer aren’t always the same person.

 

I see that puzzled look on your face, so let me explain.

 

Federal law gives the copyright to the author. In most cases, the person who wrote the manuscript is the author. But the definition changes if the material is what copyright law calls a “work made for hire.”**

 

So what is a work for hire? The law creates two categories. The first is simply “a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment.” If you are a staff journalist writing articles for the newspaper that employs you, those articles are works-for-hire. You may be the writer, but your employer is the author for copyright purposes.

 

How you label your relationship doesn’t matter. If you are billed as a “freelance correspondent” or an “independent contractor” but are required to work a certain number of hours every week and are paid for vacations and sick days, you are probably an employee rather than an independent contractor. It isn’t always easy to draw the line, but the more you look like a traditional employee, the more likely it is that the writing you do as part of the relationship is work for hire.

 

You don’t have to be an employee to create a work for hire, however. That’s because there is a second category for certain commissioned works.

 

To determine if a work fits into this second category, ask yourself the following three questions. If you answer “yes” to all of them, it is a work for hire and the person who commissioned it is the author. If even one answer is “no,” as the writer you are also the author.

 

1.  Was the work specially ordered or commissioned? In other words, did someone ask you to write it? If you did the work on assignment, it may be a work for hire. If you wrote it on your own initiative and followed a normal submission process, it is not.

 

2.  Was it created “for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas”? Magazines and newspapers are collective works. A novel is not a collective work, but a single book containing four novellas is.

 

3.  Have the parties signed a written agreement saying it is a work for hire?

 

If the material is a work for hire (either because you are an employee or because you answered all three questions in the affirmative), does that mean you can’t use it? The answer depends on your agreement with the legal author. Your employer may let you republish the material for certain purposes or under certain conditions, but ALWAYS get it in writing. The same is true for a commissioned work. See what you can negotiate, and put it in writing.

 

So should you enter into a work for hire arrangement? Weigh what you get out of it against what you give up and make your own call.

 

But don’t assume that you own it just because you wrote it.

 

_________

 

* http://hoosierink.blogspot.com/2010/11/when-writer-isnt-author.html

 

** See 17 U.S.C. 101 and 17 U.S.C. 201(b).

 

__________

 

The photograph shows the Office of War Information News Bureau in November 1942. Because these individuals were employees, the news articles they produced were works for hire. The photographer, Roger Smith, was also an employee, so the photograph belongs to the United States government. Because there is no copyright in U.S. government works, the photograph is in the public domain.