Cleaning Up

Things have been difficult -- and strange -- writing-wise, particularly lately.  I wouldn't call it Writer's Block, not in any way or form.  It's more of a Writer's Deluge.  Too many ideas, and it's like walking through thick forest to come upon a field of eggs in a marshy pond, they all crack open all at once.  There's all these little ducklings, suddenly, squabbling for attention and wanting to be fed.

Don't get me wrong.  They're awfully cute ducklings.  Fuzzy and soft, with light brown down with deep emerald green undertones.  There's the one with the wicked, devious gleam in its eyes, because it fully plans on stealing all the worms.  There's the sweet one with the golden feather-tips that just wants to cuddle.  There's even the runt, with down so light it might as well be a light blond, and it scratches itself with a little bit of confusion, as if it's not quite sure what it's supposed to do now.

They're worse than plot bunnies.  They're story duckies.

So I gave myself permission to take a break over the Easter weekend.  No writing, no thinking about any stories, no angsting over ACBB, no stressing over all the stories that are ony half-finished and nowhere close to being done.  To ensure that, I set my PC laptop to installing two years worth of updates (whoops) and filled the browser on my Mac with all the longfics I could find, regardless of fandom, because I'm just as much an avid reader as I am an obsessive writer, and I finish everything I read -- unless it's very, very bad (serious plot inconsistencies, for example), or, worse, doesn't have any formatting whatsoever.

My tactics didn't work, not 100% -- I'd pull out a sketchbook and start infodumping new ideas and plots for one of the original fiction novels I plan on rewriting sometime soon, since it was the one that had garnered the most attention from agents when I first shopped it around, years ago.  I'd write notes and sketch out scenes or draw out symbols for hours.

Or I'd knit, and get annoyed with it, and shove it aside.  Or I'd get off my ass, finally, and unpack some of the last few boxes since the move.  Guess what's in those boxes?

Papers.  Lots of papers.  I have an impressive collection of stationery and pens.  I have a pile of moleskins of full-fledged story ideas that never actually got written.  I found a ream of printed sheets for a book I'd forgotten writing but never submitted anywhere.  I found scraps of papers with seemingly random lines written on them -- including on the back of an envelope, the back of a coaster from a local bar, and a sheet of paper that, clearly, someone had been working on before I jerked it out from under their pen to appropriate.

So much for taking a break from writing and everything associated with that, huh?

Baby ducklings.  Worse than fucking plot bunnies, I swear.

Erm, help?

I've been recently contacted and informed that someone is writing a Merlin fanfic that is structurally similar to the Loaded March series and that there are some parts that were lifted directly from Loaded March itself.

The fanfic is posted as a series, though only a few chapters of the first part are available.  I skimmed through it, but as far as I can tell, the story itself is completely unlike Loaded March to begin with, the writing style is vastly different to mine, and I can't pick out anything specific that might have been lifted from Loaded March itself.

To be honest, I haven't looked at Loaded March since it was posted, so I'm not even sure if something would stand out to me right now.  I'm wondering if anyone knows of any plagiarism software that could do the checking for me?  Also, what would you do if you were in my shoes?