Plagiarism - Sins of Literature

Plagiarism is a crime against creativity, a mortal sin that has destroyed lives and careers. The contributors agreed to a difference between  brazen theft and inadvertently using a few words written by someone else as your own. The discussion ranged over many topics attached to or affecting plagiarism, and I captured a few of the main points.

Some authors think that if they write and publish a sentence, it belongs to them. Others think sentences belong to the world once they're published.
Will Self believes one can't avoid a bit of the old klepto when dealing with words. Malcolm Gladwell thinks there is a difference between the theft of a physical item such as a watch, and the theft of ideas and words.

Every young writers has authors in his head as models when he begins writing, They have studied literature for twenty years and their favourite authors are deeply embedded in their brains. They make a deep impression, and initially the budding writer writes in the style of ...... but the budding writer has to move away from them, must gradually discard them until the voice they use is theirs alone. That's when they've grown up as an Artist. One's own voice is only to be found by writing, writing and writing.

The impact of new technologies is changing our brains and making us smarter. Time moved slowly in the 15th century, but now it moves at a much faster pace, and novels need to be streamlined, too. The average reader wants Narrative, Characters and Entertainment when they read, and the long rambling novels of the sixties and seventies would not have more a a couple of hundred readers today. Copyright has only been in existence for two hundred years at best, and the rest of the time prose writing has been up for grabs, you might say. Electronic publishing will have a great impact on copyright and plagiarism, but the world hasn't really got to grips with the possibilities or the problems yet.

As a final word on plagiarism, Malcolm Gladwell thinks that if someone copies your words and uses them in a different way to you, that's OK; it is a compliment. If they use them in the same way, that's outrageous.

Sins of Literature

Drama is life with the dull parts left out, says The Road to Somewhere. Ha! Have I left the dull parts in? Is there always something at stake? These are important questions, and I ought to be able to judge my own work by now and say a straight yes or no. If I cannot, I'm not learning. But all I pick up from the despised How To Manuals goes out of the window when I read published books and wonder why an agent, an editor, a publisher thought they were worthy of publication, for most of them break the so called rules of writing. Perhaps it is because there are no rules of writing. Perhaps the sudden spate of How To Manuals is born of the current need so many have to write and see a book published, and mid-list writers have turned their hand to earning a few pounds by providing them. Martin Amis thinks writing, like having children, can be seen as a bid for immortality. Now there's food for thought.

Will Self confesses to a love/hate relationship to the demands of his vocation and every morning  visualises a RSM ordering him to "get in that room and write." Is he disciplined? How can he not be, he asks. He needs solitude especially during drafts 1-3 when he needs to keep the whole novel in his head. He wonders if young writers have what it takes to be alone and cut off so they can write. Picasso is reputed to have said "they write better in prison," and many books, including Pilgrim's Progress, have been written in prison.

On the other hand, some authors write in cafes, or in the living room with the family hopping about. Sarah Waters goes out for a walk at the end of a writing day and re-acquaints herself with the world. Susan Hill, it is said, stops writing when she is happy. Writers Block may be nothing more than depression. Some writers like music while they write, others do not. One says the rhythm of the music interferes with the rhythms of her sentences as they are generated. Alexander McCall Smith listens to Mozart to get into the calm frame of mind needed to write.

The need for solitude and silence in which to write - Virginia Woolf's Room of One's Own - is in direct opposition with today's need for authors to be out in the world promoting. Readers want to know who they are and what they think, which many writers find disturbing. Howard Jacobsen, on the other hand,  loves book festivals and audiences though he knows he should resist them and write.

Thou Shalt Not Bore

A whole industry seems to have sprung up about creative writing in the last year or two. Words of wisdom abound on the internet, books pour out of the presses, universities are advertising horrendously expensive Creative Fiction courses and lastly there are often programmes on tv and radio devoted to the subject. The latest of these is The Sins of Literature on BBC Radio 4. Part 1 was broadcast on 5th August and is available on iplayer for those in the UK.

I listened last night, and discovered nothing new, but it was interesting to hear the authors using phrases most of us need a dictionary and a couple of minutes to translate into everyday sense. Setting the tone is important for the work in progress, they say, for both author and reader. One author described the incentive to write the story as a buzz, music in the head. Another described it as a frisson, another an image that would not leave her. All agreed that the first sentence can launch the book, sets the tone and the author simply carries on working out the rest of the book. Sometimes it is easier to work through the whole story and then write the first chapter, because then the author knows the important aspects of the work.

What happens next? Well, then comes plot, landscape and characters and the most important of these is character. One author spends days "being that character." Will Self is more interested in relationships, in how characters re-act to each other, than character itself.
Some authors begin with a bang and lose their way in the middle - this fault is common in hundreds of books.
The authors excelled, all of them, at quoting famous authors. Mickey Spillane: "Nobody reads a book to get to the middle." Or Philip Larkin's comment on a book: "A beginning, a muddle and an end."
Stephen King has good advice i.f things get difficult: walk away from the problem: you should simply "Let the boys in the basement sort out the problems overnight." By which he means let the sub conscious fix things while you sleep.