News: Clichés, Letters, And "Someone Wrote MY BOOK!"

"Anyone who has worked on a creative project for years will understand the horror that filled me when I realized that, in structure and in writing style (even in fucking title!) someone had written a book bizarrely similar to what I had just finished. My novel was no longer unique, no longer fresh, no longer, well, novel. I felt like I'd been gutted. I screamed. I laughed. I called my partner, who was shaken, but not nearly as unhinged by the news as I was starting to become..."

A writer's worst nightmare: When someone else writes your book.

Also:

• RIP Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and Nobel Laureate.
• "Part of the reason for the shorter life of such books is the endless news cycle that rapidly churns through stories. That makes event-driven celebrity books especially tough. Publishers considering 'ripped from the headlines' books have to ask: will anyone remember this event in a year? And is this really a book or just a magazine article?" The perils and potential in celebrity books.
• Here: six easy tips for self-editing your fiction.
• So the twilight of the YA movie is, according to this article, is that the Chosen One trope that is the staple of most of these films is being worn out. "...far from wanting to watch other kids save the world time and again, kids would like to watch them just being kids."
• An excerpt from Aboriginal writer Tony Birch's keynote address at the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference. Too good to grab quote snippets from.
• Should we avoid these clichés like the plague?
• How to kill your boss, annoying neighbour, or irritating relative - in fiction.
• Penguin and Macmillan's is thinking of giving customers who bought a New York Times bestseller from iBookStore to US$3.06 per title; buyers of other titles would be entitled to $0.73 per book, as part of a settlement with the US Department of Justice over the Apple price-fixing thing.
• So US prez Obama visited an Amazon fulfilment centre. Author groups and indie publishers freaked, so Obama wrote a letter. An ndie bookseller association director is not impressed. Be it scriveners or Syria, the dude just can't win.
• ¡Hola! Kindle Direct Publishing arrives in Mexico.
• The wind rises ... and off he flies. Veteran Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki reportedly retires.
• Apparently, Oxford Dictionaries Online has 'recognised' the word "twerk", among others, due to overwhelming popularity (i.e., the Huns overran the gates).
• Here: Eleven reasons to love listicles.