WTF, Margaret Atwood?
I use the pen name of Jed Bonglover and am a writer with limited imagination and even less resource. Recently I read a highly pubbed short story by a writer whom I had never previously heard of and decided to steal some of her themes and create my own story.
I figured Theme stealing ain't illegal as long as I don't copy her stuff word for word and, after reading it, why would I ever want to? Copy word for word, that is.
Okay, her main character is a shady dude married to a classy bitch who kicks him out if the house then changes her mind after he's gone. His best pal is an even shadier dude without an original thought to his name.
Together, the two dudes cooperate with some drug dealers who use old furniture to hide their drugs that are then stored in rental storage units where the rental fee is allowed to expire so that the unit goes up for auction where shady guy #1 outbids all other suitors to obtain the key to the unit. Said old furniture is then presumably moved to a legitimate business where it is retrieved by the crooked dealer and a sum paid to the shady guys for their effort and future silence.
WTF? In a past life where the statute of limitations have long expired, I can assure anyone who listens, drug dealing don't work this way because this scenario leaves too much up to chance and chance ain't the best of friends with illegal importers of illicit goods and services.
I mean, think about it, those packets had been in that desk in the storage unit for well over two months else the unit would never have gone to auction status. And don't tell me the guy loaded the drugs in the past day or two because that would have involved the storage company using a key to unlock their second lock and that would be done only if the back fees were paid which, of course, would have deleted the unit from the auction list. Duh.
So implausible is this author's scenario that I am aghast she isn't being accused of stealing the idea from a Nova Scotian first grader whose knowledge of the illegal drug business is on a probable equal plain with hers.
Not to mention the silly relationship issues where the first grader has probable better knowledge. Come on, lady author, have you never been loved? I mean like real man-woman kinda love?
Tell a guy a girl wants a divorce just before breakfast just doesn't happen. It is too risking of an dangerous physical confrontation that the female definitely doesn't want. Instead, this being the modern times it is, send him an email or SMS text after he's left the house. Better yet, make it public on a social network or two. For a woman the first thought must be of self preservation. Above all else.
Hmm, now that I think about it, I'm finding it really hard to think of any themes of hers worth stealing except they've all been written about a thousand times before.
She then has the audacity to ask her readers to provide fan fiction of their versions of how this whole mess ends. Dude, I'll tell you how it ends.
First of all, the van hauling the desk from the storage unit gets in a wreck on the I95 and white and brown powdery stuff coats cars and highway from exit ramp to the next mile marker.
Second, crooked drug dealer puts an end to the lives of the shady guys for failing to deliver rather than blaming himself for the cockadoodledo storage unit scheme.
And thirdly, the tidy wife weds the drug dealer who was her partner in crime all along.
One thing I've learned from this writing experience: in the field of fiction writing there is always someone with worse ideas than mine, so bad, in fact, that my bad ideas start to seem like good ones.
Like this one.
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