Why yes, I AM procrastinating, why do you ask?

[zana16]

avacado_love asked "Is it ethical to world-build off of what is essentially not yours to begin with?" in a completely different context, and I've been thinking lately about a project I've been meaning to do for years.

My mom wrote a fantasy novel, unpublished but finished. My mom has been dead for almost twenty years. I have several drafts, including the final one, and it's pretty good. I've always meant to type it up (it was written on an Apple II, back when floppy disks were actually floppy) and submit it for publication.

Here's my question: is it ethical for me to change it? There are weaknesses to the story. One is that it was written in the '80s, with many of the fantasy elements of the '80s. The characterization is not strong, but the plot is interesting. There are parts that I think were gacked from Pern, though never having read Pern I'm not sure.

Who is the copyright holder? I would assume my dad owns the copyright. If I change it, do I become partial copyright holder? My dad once said he would never have the emotional strength to be able to read the manuscript. Years later, I don't know if that's still true.

I also don't know whether this would be a good idea for me, emotionally. Trying to get to know my dead mother through her writing, then changing that writing, feels like it might bring up a lot of stuff. Especially since, well, I haven't read the manuscript in 10 years. What if, upon re-read, I discover that it wasn't as good as I'd remembered? Will I be able to handle that?

And I'm still stuck on the "is it ethical to change somebody's work without their permission?" And if I did, and I by some miracle was able to publish it... I realize that I would need to work these details out with my dad beforehand, however painful it might be for him.

Back to work! Or at least, back to procrastinating from work!

Comments

[melannen]

I've been running into this right now with looking at my grandfather's poetry.

Here's what I can tell you, in terms of the legal issues: unless it was specified in the will, whoever inherited the bulk of your mother's estate owns copyright on all her creative works - so if everything just went to your father automatically, he has copyright. If the will splits the estate between several people (if, say, half went to your father and half in trust to you) then all of the heirs share copyright, and (if the seminar I went to was correct, and at least in the US), everyone who shares in the copyright has full control to edit, publish or copy the work, with or without the permission of the other copyright owners - you all have the right to publish, and none of you have the right to forbid the other heirs from publishing.

Legally, the copyright owner (or somebody who has their permission) can also edit or alter the work however they desire. There's an ethical question there as to at what point you are going to list yourself as co-author or editor, but as far as I know, legally, that's entirely up to the copyright owner.

If your father does have sole control of the copyright (and possibly even if it's shared), then if you're actually thinking about submitting to editors, I suggest asking him to transfer full ownership of your mother's copyrights to you; I've never looked into the details, but it's the sort of thing that's probably cheaply doable just with basic contract law.


...as to the ethics, that's a much harder question. I can tell you that it's accepted practice for professional authors' unpublished works to be given to somebody else to finish or re-written by somebody else, and often it is a child, so in terms of the professional culture, it's not really an issue. In terms of how you feel about it yourself and within your family ... well, that's harder.

(for the record, I've explicitly written into my own will who gets which bit of intellectual property, and that they have my blessing to alter it however they see fit, because I wanted to make these sort of questions as esay as possible for my own heirs.)

[zana16]

Hmm. I hadn't considered putting any of that in my will, though I have listed which stories and novels need to be deleted from my computer, unread. As in, my first three novels or so -- SO BAD. Never want them to see the light of day, but they serve as useful reminders of how far I've come. Also, they sometimes function as my guilty-pleasure crack.

I believe everything went to my father; at the age of ten, I wasn't really all that aware of things such as wills.