Artistic Differences Never Die
Behind the Page of '2025' (WIP)
It’s a snow day. Work is shut down so maintenance workers have time to plow. Sure, you could say that I was stalling by posting this little ditty and not the next installment of the novella, but the truth is, I have worked a great deal on the novella today, and most of that work included reading through old, original manuscripts for this story. Thirty-year-old, pencil-written, cringy material, in fact.
Don’t know if it’s Mars in Retrograde or just the fact that I’m about to wave goodbye to my 45th year, but I am super introspective right now, and pretty darn nostalgic. Reading this bundle of yellow notebook paper did not help that nostalgia, and led me to a dire discovery and a flood of unpleasant memories.
wait; did I plagiarize this story??
Reading through all the original drafts of this story from 7th grade, I realized that ‘2025’ was a joint project between me and one of my friend group; the voracious reader, who I’ll call S. She was the one who had coined the title ‘2025,’ and I think we’d had “artistic differences” over this project.
If I remember correctly (and I’m sure I don’t, but going by the feeling) the storyline started with S, or she felt like I was stealing her ideas. But I thought we were writing it together. It must have been a misunderstanding at best, or my characteristic foolish oversight at worst. At any rate, the characters were alternate versions of ourselves, so I figured it made sense we would both chime in. Nearly every day during 7th grade, I spent the night before writing. I looked forward to showing S what I wrote, and we would talk about it and plot back and forth with each other.
I lived for that hour in the library every morning before Band. It was one of the only wonderful things in my life at the time. If I’m honest, those days are still in my top five “best days of my life.”
Maybe she let it go, maybe we decided to split the story and write our own versions. (Based on the paper evidence, I think it was probably the latter.) I do remember her being irritated with me. I vaguely remember it may have had to do with future publication of the story and authorship. Heck, it could have been just a standard little drama between 14-year-olds. But I don’t remember her holding a grudge. And if she did, she never showed it. All the more reason to hold her beloved in my memory. My creative enthusiasm often backfires.
the original title…
What I can confirm for sure is that I did relinquish the title ‘2025’ to S for her own use, and attributed the original story idea to her.
Titles of my old manuscripts (ca. 1993) are carefully labeled: “Born to Make the Sunrise: Companion to 2025 by S.G.”
I hate this title. Not the attribution part, but the title. I thought it was irrelevant when I wrote it, and I think it’s irrelevant now. I wish I had S’s title, but my conscience won’t let me use it now, even after all these years.
Thankfully, I’ve already declared ‘2025’ to be the working title of this novella, and not the final title (but I feel bad for not catching this sooner). Naturally, I’ll create a better title by the time I’m done. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
Consequence of Dimension Hopping
2025: RAMIFICATION (is this cheating?)
To Heal a Rift in Spacetime
What do you think?
- kmC
P.S. Don’t worry, if you come up with a cool title I’d like to use, I won’t use it without permission, and I’ll definitely provide attribution. lol… my conscience couldn’t bear another rift amongst friends!
