[Listen]
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[Woman’s Voice]
This is Behind the Cut with Christopher Gronlund. The companion show to Not About Lumberjacks.
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Christopher Gronlund:
Behind the Cut is an in-depth look at the latest episode of Not About Lumberjacks and often contains spoilers from the most recent story. You’ve been warned…
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If you write enough, it’s bound to happen: something you’ve finished or released is similar to (or even very much like) something else out there. And with the Internet being what it is, you’re likely to hear, “You swiped from that new story that’s out!”—or even something older. Something you’re not familiar with.
Thing is: it’s entirely possible to write a very similar story as someone else without knowing the other story exists.
It happens all the time…
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My first novel, Hell Comes with Wood-Paneled Doors, is a humorous coming of age story about a family traveling cross-country in a possessed station wagon. And if I had a book published for every time I heard, “That’s just like National Lampoon’s Vacation,” I’d have a shelf full of books.
Hell Comes with Wood-Paneled Doors came about when I first started considering submitting fiction, when I was twenty. I had a copy of the Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market guide and was looking for places accepting short fiction. One place was a publication specializing in station wagons. It turned out to be a newsletter, so the story the publication inspired in me was too long for what amounted to a tri-fold pamphlet, but I had a story that would not leave my mind.
When I released it as a podcast and later as an e-book, I heard the comparisons to National Lampoon’s Vacation. But aside from a father and son buying a station wagon in the opening scene, they are very different stories!
(By the way, the story now lives on the Not About Lumberjacks site, under the Novels link.)
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There’s an early-ish Not About Lumberjacks story called “Standstill.” It’s about a woman whose husband is dying, and she has a magical watch that can pause time for 24 hours. The watch breaks, and they are stuck in time together. She loves it, because it means her husband will not die, but he grows to hate it because she’s holding on to him and denying herself so many experiences.
I released the story about the time a coworker at an old job found out I have a fiction podcast. “Standstill” was the first story he listened to. He came in one morning and told me he listened…and loved the story. And then he said, “You totally got that idea from Futurama, didn’t you?”
I didn’t, but…maybe I did? Subconsciously? Because I loved Futurama when it was on, even though I’d forgotten there was an episode in which main characters, Fry and Leela, end up stuck in time and grow old together. [Spoiler alert: the characters in my story don’t grow old in their time stall, but maybe I did put my own spin on that Futurama episode without realizing it?] The episode, called “Meanwhile,” aired on September 4, 2013, and my story “Standstill” came out on July 3, 2016. (I probably shouldn’t have released a story with a dying husband on my 24th anniversary!)
It’s possible that Futurama story subconsciously stuck in my head for three years. (It was a great episode, although “The Luck of the Fryrish” episode about Fry’s brother is my fave.) Or it’s possible one of the many other time-bending stories involving a watch inspired it. (For all I know, the Futurama episode was inspired by another story.)
This type of thing is rather common with writing. You can almost always read, see, or listen to something that makes you think of something else. (I once had someone tell me my second completed novel reminded them of the TV shows Twin Peaks crossed with Northern Exposure, even though I didn’t set out to mimic either show. Mine was just a surreal story about a murder in a very quirky small town in the Northwoods of Wisconsin that reminded someone of those shows. If anything had an influence on that particular book, it was Robert Olmstead’s, A Trail of Heart’s Blood Wherever We Go, even though they are very different things.)
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Another thing that can happen when you write: you release a story that suddenly becomes topical through some news-worthy event.
The final story of this year’s Christmas episode features the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future tormenting a corrupt pharmaceutical CEO. As that character defends his greed, he blames things on health insurance companies denying claims for people’s struggles and woes.
And…The week it was released, a gunman killed the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Suddenly, that scene in the story—and a healthcare CEO being tormented throughout—was even more topical.
Because this sometimes happens, I still released the story…but I did put a disclaimer right up front that it was written before that murder.
But there’s another little twist in my writing and that recent news story.
The characters in my first novel are going to the Grand Canyon to spread the ashes of the protagonist’s grandmother, a woman named June Mangione. And a younger, alternate version of June Mangione is the protagonist of the last novel I finished.
I shook my head when they caught the killer of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO and heard his name: Luigi Mangione.
While I still released the Christmas episode, were I submitting the last novel I finished, I really do think I’d change June’s last name. (And I still have days where I think, “Shorten the novel, rewrite the query to make it clear the protagonist can do real magic, and see what happens…” If I did, I’d definitely change her last name.)
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I can think of many other instances where this kind of thing happened to me. Or even times an opportunity was passed by because a company was interested in what I pitched, but doing something similar.
In the spring of 2005, I was sent to Atlanta for two months (with a new job that told me mere weeks before in my interview that there’d be no travel). It was the time Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim Sunday lineup was getting really big. And because nothing other than recording and releasing Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors happened, I thought, “Pitch it to Adult Swim as a summer mini-series for 2006!”
It was a long shot, but why not, right?!
I was surprised when I heard from the person heading up Adult Swim while I was still out there. He said my story sounded great and…if they didn’t have something similar in the works, he’d have me in to pitch the series in person. (Which I thought was really cool!)
The similar show turned out to be “Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil,” which came out in October of the same year. It had virtually no similarities to Hell Comes With Wood Paneled Doors, but when you’re putting together a lineup of shows, even vague similarities (having Hell-based things in common), is too much.
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I expect things like this to happen as long as I write and release stories. It’s entirely possible—even likely—for a handful of people to come up with very similar things, especially if dealing with topical ideas.
For all I know, right as I press publish on this behind-the-scenes look at this year’s Christmas story, someone else is releasing a podcast making the exact same points, completely independent of this one…
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Thank you for listening to Not About Lumberjacks and Behind the Cut. Theme music for Behind the Cut is a tune called “Reaper” by Razen. Visit nolumberjacks.com for information about the music, the episodes, and voice talent.
Also, for as little as a dollar a month—and actually even free—you can have access to a bigger behind-the-scenes look at Not About Lumberjacks on Patreon. Check out patreon.com/cgronlund if that sounds like your kinda thing.
In March (but probably in February knowing me), it’s a story about a sleep technician who answers a random ad for somebody looking for an enemy.
Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
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