Distracted from the Work

[alanajoli]

In one of the comments from yesterday's post, lyster (good friend of the blog and fellow Substrater Max Gladstone) noted things that have been distracting him from writing and included this sentence:

This wasn't a problem until recently, when I got a day job, because I could get all my Work done during the day and only rarely had small-w work (the

Comments

[lyster]

Yay! Go 'Lana go! Rah rah sis-boom-bah-etc!

I seriously want to see more of Blackstone. I want to see more boarding-school-magic-y goodness.

[alanajoli]

I want to get back to that, too. But I *also* want to work on all these short stories in my brain, which is the Work as well. :) I had a great idea this morning for that gender-bending anthology open submission I sent out to Substrate -- *if* George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion is in the public domain. I need to do some checking...

But today, obituaries!

[jeff_duntemann]

No you don't. Pygmalion was written in 1913, which places it reliably in the public domain, at least in the US. (As a US publisher I have had reason to know these things.) Under US copyright law, anything published prior to 1923 is in the public domain, end of story. It's a lot more complex in years after 1923, but that's not an issue in this case.

If your publisher is outside the US, you may have to research it further, but if your publisher is here, no problem.

[alanajoli]

Oh, wonderful! My theater history is a little lacking, so I couldn't remember if Pygmalion (set in England) was also *published* in England, which certainly would have made things more difficult. Hurrah for public domain!

And thanks for knowing that off the top of your head!