Grr, I'm getting frustrated.
Recently I sent off a submission of my graphic novel. I've been waiting and waiting, but haven't heard back from the publisher. Mind you, they did say that it would take up to a month for them to send a response if they were interested - so far it's been a little over two weeks, so there is still a chance, but I'm starting to lose hope.
Sure, there are other publishers out there I can try my luck on, but the publisher I sent my proposal to seems ideal and I just want to be able to get my ideas into production.
What I find most agonising though, is that I want to be able to get my ideas out into the public consciousness. I want people to enjoy and appreciate what I come up with. Every time I see a film, book, TV series - anything that is the result of someone's creativity, I get envious. I want this too. Yes, I could put some stuff up on the internet - which was sort of the point of creating a blog, but I'm a bit cagey when it comes to the concept of copyright.
Now, I'm no expert on how copyright laws work exactly, but as I understand it, copyright of intellectual property is obtained as soon as it's put up on public display. However there are a few well known and used sites where it's not quite clear cut. A recent email on a digital artist mailing list described how they lost ownership of a showreel clip on YouTube due to owners of referenced material getting all antsy about their work being used, even though the person who put up the clip had acquired all the necessary permission to use someone else's material in their clip. Or something to that effect. And I don't have any examples off the top of my head, I may have read somewhere that a few places where you can put up things (now that I think about it, Facebook might be one), where everything you put up, may be owned or part owned by the owners of the site, in the off-chance they wanted to do something with it. This is why I've momentarily stopped putting up pictures on this blog and instead these essay length ramblings. I don't know what the policies are on user's retention of ownership on material on blogger.com, but I'm erring on the side of caution.
The other reason is that I'm reluctant to share most of my ideas until I really get at it and get my ideas out there into popular culture. This is because someone may see an idea of mine, think it's good and adopt something similar to their commercial work. Even if it's done in a way that does not infringe copyright, a similarity may still be there and despite that I may have come up with the idea first, the fact that it has been adopted into someone else's, more pouplar work, means that I lose some of the originality and uniqueness of the idea. These ideas of mine have been swimming around my head for over a decade. They mean a lot to me.
I suppose it's best for me to keep trying to get published, but I don't want to wait - I want it NOW. Oh well - Borderlands 2 is out tomorrow so that might keep me distracted for a bit.
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