A fear I had about writing is shared by hundreds of other would-be and published authors: unintentional plagiarism. If you place those words (unintentional plagiarism) in a search box, you will have hundreds of articles to choose from on the subject. Before I used Grammarly, which has a plagiarism and AI check for possible infractions, I used personal experiences to craft my story to counteract this fear. I also checked every chapter and word with Grammarly; there were no instances of plagiarism in my story.
How many personal experiences in my life and the lives of family members did I use to write this story. As I paged through, I counted thirty, and I am sure I missed a few. Perhaps the old adage that many first novels are semi-autobiographical is not all myth.
Below you will find an explanation of how I fictionalized three life experiences to create the content and tone of Chapter 20.
- My Uncle and Aunt once had snakes in their basement. They think they came in through laundry pipes.
- When a long black rat snake slithered out of the ivy in our front garden one summer day, my husband's legs went up and down, but he went nowhere while all the time choking out the words, "Snake, big snake..."
- My sister and I, fooling around as kids do and scaring each other on the basement stairs, accidentally knocked a full paint can over. It opened up and exploded across the basement floor like a sunburst. Extreme panic ensued; our feet created all kinds of tracks, making the whole situation worse.
All of those things were woven into Chapter 20 of Birch Run, excerpted below:
Chapter 20 Gordon and the Hissy Fit The basement door, swollen by the day's high humidity, would not open. Gordon jiggled the knob and pushed hard with the flat of his hand, but it didn't budge. Placing his shoulder against the flat wood, he shoved. The upper edge cracked a sliver, but the bottom stuck fast. Sighing with impatience, he gave the door a thwack with his knee. The hinges screeched, echoed by Gordon's cry of pain; he'd forgotten his torn skin. His efforts were worthless; the door was still jammed. "Dad," Bethanne called to him from her vantage point at the basement window. "I think everyone has left. Can we go upstairs now?" He shut his eyes at her words, mortified over the situation he had placed them in. There had been few choices; every window in the house was wide and without curtains. Whatever room they went to, they were visible to the church folks cleaning up the remains of the picnic. No one in the family wanted to be in view after the moving van had driven away with all their belongings. Hiding out in the basement had given them a semblance of privacy. "Did you get the door to open?" Peg called to him. "Are we going to have to crawl out the window?" Sensing her eyes upon his back, he turned and walked back down the stairs, his mood plummeting further as he noticed the hopelessness on her face. "There's a workbench against the back wall," he said, trying to keep his voice lighthearted. He paused a moment to pull her into his arms and give her a quick hug. "Maybe I'll find a rubber mallet to hammer the door open." He crossed the uneven dirt floor to the sagging workbench, brushing cobwebs away from his face and hair. A rickety shelf held a dusty array of tools and cigar boxes filled with nails and screws. A sheet of pegboard loaded with adjustable hooks hung above it. Lined up across the top was a row of miniature toy vehicles. "Hey," he called over his shoulder, "Someone left us a collection of Matchbox cars." "Neat-o!" Joey and Charlotte said in unison, pushing each other as they tried to reach the workbench first. "Jinks!" shouted Joey, punching Charlotte hard on the arm, "We said neat-o at the same time. You can't talk 'til someone says your name. Nah-na-nah-nah-na, you can't talk, you can't talk. No one say Charlotte's name! No one say– Oh," he wailed, and clapped his hands over his mouth, as he realized he broke his own rule. "Darn!" "Shhh!" Peg raised her voice over Joey's gloating. "Gordon, something is making a funny noise over here. Almost as if air is hissing out of a pipe. I keep hearing a swooshing noise." She cocked her head and kept quiet, listening. "You have to find out where it's coming from; I think it's near the sink. The whole house could blow up if it's a gas leak. We'll all be killed." Gordon let out an impatient breath but stopped short before he gave into the impulse to shout aloud. 'Problems, problems, problems! Too many problems!' He managed to sound reasonably sane as he said, "Hold on just a minute," and fished around in a half-closed drawer. "Aha!" he held up a rusty flashlight and flipped it on. "We're in luck; it works." Clicking the beam of light off and on beneath his chin, he made a series of spooky faces. "Bwaa-ha-ha!" he growled. "Gordon, please. You're worse than the kids about teasing." The expression of concentration on her face gave way to an irritated scowl as Joey and Charlotte, following closely behind him, hooted out laughs of admiration for his prank. "Don't come any closer. Gas leaks are dangerous." "Your mother is right," Gordon said. "Go stand by Bethanne." Both children moved away, holding their noses. Joey stood on tiptoe; he lifted his head toward the window, faking a loud, gusty wheeze as he breathed in and out. "Dad, make Joey stop, it's annoying," said Bethanne. "Be quiet, Joey. I can't concentrate with all that racket." Gordon cupped his hand around his ear and leaned nearer the laundry sink. "Dad?" Joey's voice was suddenly tinged with uneasiness. Raising a cautionary finger, Gordon shook his head, sure he'd heard a strange swish when Joey stopped the fake wheezing. Peg was right; the sound came from the sink. He focused the light on the pipe running along the wall from the first floor. He guessed that a thin stream of water must be escaping through a joint in the pipework. Rubbing the soldering with a forefinger, he bent his head toward it and listened, but still nothing. The swooshing grabbed his attention again as he moved away to check another pipe. "Hmm," he said, "Maybe something is stuck in the drain." He aimed the light into the cement tub. "What?" he held the light closer as one of the hoses connecting the sink to the washer shifted from side to side. The movement stopped, and the hose unexpectedly rose straight up into mid-air. Gordon flinched back in surprise and lost his grip on the flashlight. The lens shattered against the edge of the sink; the light flickered and went out, but not before they all recognized the long, sinewy form rising with supple gracefulness. "Snake!" everyone screamed together. "Kill it, Dad, kill it, kill it, kill it!" hollered Charlotte. "It's climbing out!" shrieked Bethanne. The black snake, looking like a ten-footer in the shadows of the basement, slid onto the floor. Gordon's legs began to move, but he couldn't seem to do more than lift them up and down in exaggerated slow motion and say in a strangled whisper, "Snake, big snake!" After one blood-curdling shriek, Peg seized an old broom propped alongside a cement pillar and declared war on the snake with its bristles. Bethanne, Charlotte, and Joey, cowering together near the window, moved as if they were one body, as the snake, trying to evade the rapid swack of the broom, slithered toward them. They ran screaming to the staircase and pounded up the stairs, sounding like a stampeding herd of spooked cattle. Peg wildly swung the broom over her head to defend her babies, bashing it against the only working light. The bulb shattered with an ominous buzz and hiss. Pieces of heated glass flew all over the floor. The screams from the children got louder as the stairway darkened. A metallic thunk joined their hysterical cries, followed by liquid splashing, as something bounced down on each step. The door let loose under the panicked pounding of three pairs of fists and crashed open, slamming into the wall behind it with a loud bang. The children's feet thundered down the hallway as they all screamed, "Sna-a-a-a-ake!" "That's enough, Peg!" Gordon yelped as the swish of broom bristles skimmed his ear. He covered his head with his arms as she ran in circles, repeatedly hitting the floor with the broom. "You've scared it away," he assured her. "Someone bring me a new lightbulb," he yelled. "Does anyone hear me up there? I need one right now." "I think I killed it, Gordon." She stopped her wild thwacking and leaned against the broom handle, spent, her gasps for breath ragged. "I'm afraid I burst a water pipe, though. I feel something wet all over my feet." Charlotte brought Gordon a lightbulb. She stood three steps up. "I'm not coming down there," she insisted. "That slimy thing will wind around my leg." Gordon took the bulb. "Turn the switch off," he told her. Taking a dirty washcloth off the washer, he swaddled the jagged glass as he turned it, catching the broken socket before it fell. "I'll have some light for you in just a second." He screwed in the new bulb. "Charlotte, flip the switch on again." She did. He almost wished she hadn't. Peg stood drenched, foot to thigh, in splashes of white house paint. A large sunburst marked the spot of its eruption across the dirt floor. A circle of footprints orbited it, like planets around the sun. A few white sprays of broom swacks gave testimony to the intensity of Peg's attack. She looked down and then back at Gordon, surprise etched on her face. "What is it?" she asked, holding her hands out to her sides to see if they had been splashed too. "I was going to touch up the baseboards tomorrow with old paint I found. I sat the can on the top step to remember to use it. It must have fallen when the kids tried to escape the snake." "Oh, my gosh, the snake, do you see it." She forgot the wet paint and sidled up to him, casting a wary eye over the basement floor. A shriek escaped her as she pointed toward a dark corner. "Look!" The snake, doused by the paint, had left a trail of white in a long s-pattern. "It can't be that big, can it?" Peg shuddered as she looked at the line. "No, no, it's just a little guy." Gordon tried to keep the tremble running through his body out of his voice. "That's just the evidence of his escape." "Please make sure it's gone," she begged. He could not get out of it without looking like a coward; he picked up the broom Peg had set down and walked around the basement perimeter. "Look again." she insisted when he finished his inspection. "It could be hiding anywhere." "Dad, did you catch it? Can I keep it in an aquarium?" Curious, Joey ventured back down, intent on not missing the action. "Absolutely not! You can't keep it!" Peg almost snarled. Gordon got down on his haunches where the trail of the snake's getaway ended. He spied a small hole, opening in the lower wall where the paint streak stopped. "I found his hole," he announced, feeling like he had discovered buried treasure. "There's some carpenter's putty on the workbench. I'll plug it up. That snake won't be able to get back in here again." "Are you sure putty will stop it?" she sounded doubtful. "Sure, I'm sure. I'll plug up all the holes and cracks I find. Okay?" "Thanks, Honey." Peg smiled approval over the extra effort. "That will make me feel a whole lot better." She took off her paint-splattered shoes and tiptoed up the stairs. The jangle of the silverware drawer caused a chuckle to escape him. He knew she was searching for a knife or spatula while inspecting every corner of the kitchen. "Gordon! Come quick!" Peg called. He grabbed a garden shovel and took the steps two at a time. The vision of snakes slithering across the linoleum floor filled his head. Peg stood at the side window looking toward the Owens's house next door. She smiled momentarily at the shovel he held in his hand before an air of concern returned. "I just saw Bob and Jane Owens half-carry Effie into their house. Grace was with them. Something is wrong." *** I checked every chapter and word of my book with the Plagiarism check on Grammarly. There was not any instance of plagiarism in any of my work in comparison to millions of files used for checking. *** |
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