SOMETHING BORROWED

SOMETHING BORROWED

I have blogged a bit about this already but it seems worth saying something else on the subject at this end of the year.

I recall some long years back, before I had anything published, showing a writer acquaintance some poems I had written… bad poems, I can see that now. She made some kind comments and that was it. Except that a year later I attended a book launch of hers. We who had worked with her, even if only peripherally, scoured the pages of her work to see if we were somehow in it. We were mostly disappointed. Then I noticed that two lines of a poem I had written had found their way as prose into something she had penned. I was elated. Not feeling robbed or hungry for revenge. I still had my poem, so it was not robbery; and what she had done with the lines was in a different context in her work and so not the same. I felt uplifted that my words had found their way into her work. Uplifted, not in the least wronged. Nor would I have felt wronged if I had found something of myself in her work. Yet there is a great deal of hysterical nonsense talked about property and ownership when it comes to words and ideas.

I have just read a brilliantly lucid essay on the subject by a clear thinking writer called Malcolm Gladwell. His analysis of complex subject matter is always interesting and thoughtful. His books ‘Tipping Point’, and ‘Blink’ and ‘Outliers’ ably display his intelligence and his accessability. In his essay called ‘Something Borrowed’ (from his book, ‘What The Dog Saw’) Gladwell discusses the matter of plagiarism. It is an essay that many writers and editors would do well to read and read again. He talks about how some of his words had been used by a playwright; the same playwright using the life of a person Gladwell had written an article about. The essay does a good job of making sense of the issue. He too did not feel robbed. He felt it was some sort of compliment.

Ideas are free and should be free… that is what I have always thought and explains why I am not ‘Outraged of Scotland’ when I find someone has used something I have written to inspire something they have written. Gladwell’s conclusion chimes pretty well with my own. He does sympathise with the feelings of the writer who feels robbed, but does not conclude that robbery has taken place. Artists and writers have always been inspired by other artists and writers and their respective works… on a basic level how else do we account for a proliferation of teen-vampire books on the back of the success of that first teen-vampire novel and then film? The point is that when we talk about ownership of ideas, it is absurd to say someone owns a particular structure or theme or event in a fiction. More than that, as Gladwell says, it is nothing short of dishonest to claim a ‘virgin birth’ for ideas… actually he goes further and claims this for words and the order they are given. The chains of influence exist for every writer and every written piece… there is honesty in acknowledging that. I am a writer who freely acknowledges that my writing is open to influence from all over the place... I say 'all over the place' because I do not always know where my ideas come from till long after I have written a piece, and in some cases I am certain that I never know.

Gladwell says it is  ‘dangerous to be overly vigilant in policing creative expression’. Yes, straight replication of another’s work has to be unmasked; but it is the differences that are to be looked for more closely, for in the differences we are likely to see the artist at work and something original will be there.

And for the person who thought it unethical for a writer to borrow from another writer/colleague… art is not ethics. Gladwell points that out too.

It is refreshing to find someone putting into words the thoughts that have been in my head for years. I left a writing group because I did not share their view on ideas… for some of them in the group, ideas are something to be kept secret and hidden in case someone else ‘steals’ them. For me, ideas are something to be shared and if they go on and inspire someone else then that is a reason for celebration not litigation. Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford Law Professor, in his book ‘Free Culture’ says it best:

‘He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.’

Calling all intelligent and thinking writers everywhere, go read Gladwell for sense on the subject. For hysteria go read the bloggers who claim to tell the 'whole story' without any sense of their own limited perception.

Not Likely? A Port Brokeferry Truth.

(This piece was thought too unlikely for inclusion in the collaborative project it was originally written for. The editor did not think it 'true' enough; thought that Huntly's wife would not love him as she does if she knew what she says she knows about her husband - but history is littered with examples of this kind of love... just another reason for all my characters coming to Port Brokeferry!)

 THE THOUGHTS OF HUNTLY’S WIFE

Huntly thinks I don’t know. He thinks I don't see him looking at Eileen in the café over the lip of his morning coffee cup. Or snatching sight of Pamela who runs the length of the beach on alternate mornings. Or smiling at the girls coming home from school chirping like birds. He’s a man. That’s what men do: looking. Like Guthrie spit-polishing his tables, and stopping to watch the running-girl taking off her t-shirt, every other morning the same. And Edwin on the bridge of The Silver Herring, his face turned to 15 year old Corinne walking the harbour front with her books pressed to her chest as though she is hiding something. Even Mad Martin, screaming at seagulls, screaming at the sky, loses sight of where he is sometimes, as he steals a look at Mhairi sketching the sea.

Huntly looks too. He thinks I don’t know, but I do. Bless him and God love him. Married for longer than not, and there’s no secret he has that I can’t fathom. I know when he is coming down sick, even before his temperature rises. I know when he’s hungry or when a sadness is near, or when Huntly will see the funny side. You don’t love a man this many years without knowing the tick-tock inner working of him.

And I know about Alice, though Huntly thinks that is a bigger secret than all the rest. I know about the letters he writes and burns in the grate before I see them. Except sometimes he keeps the new-written page hid in the drawer of his desk, so he can read it one more time before setting it to the flames.

He loves me, does Huntly. I know that, too. I have the best of him. It is my bed he sleeps in, and me he turns to when he needs. But he loves her as well, loves Alice, and yes I know that. It stretches way back that love, back to before we was husband and wife, me and Huntly. And I know all about Alice, then and now. I’ve seen her standing in nearly no clothes at her window, and I know Huntly sees what I have seen: Alice with her hand to her face, her fingers touching her own lips, touching, like kissing, the tips. Her heart is elsewhere, and I know all about that too.

Dear dear Huntly. Men are always the fools in love. I kiss him sometimes, and I know it is not me he kisses. I can tell. It makes me love him more. Does that make me the bigger fool, I wonder. And I laugh at that. Like Dodie laughs, at nothing, or at something that nobody else knows.

Ah Huntly. He won’t ever leave me. Not ever. Nothing is more certain. He is kind and thinks of me, and there is a place in his heart that is mine, only mine, and that is enough to put a song in my mouth.

The start of Tuesday in Port Brokeferry

(As promised, a new Port Brokeferry piece for Xmas... enjoy and a happy one to all my readers)

SINNIE’S DREAM

Sinnie’s light is on. She is sitting up in bed writing her dream into a blue leatherbound notebook that she keeps by the bed for the purpose. Outside it is growing light and Callum is listening at Tom’s window. Sinnie does not know this.

‘I dreamed of owls again. Three owls. Faces like flowers and eyes as shiny as new coal, or ink when it drops from the pen onto the page. One of the owls was larger than the rest. He stood tall and proud, his chest all puffed and swollen. He was wearing a waistcoat like Struan Courtald from the Victoria Hotel. I did not know that in the dream and do only think of it now. The silver buttons were the same. All fastened and shiny. He had a watch on a chain and that is something Struan Courtald once had. The other two owls were all feathers and flashing eyes.’

Sinnie pauses there. She bites the end of her pen, her eyes closed, trying to see again the dream that is already thinning into something like nothing. She is smiling to herself, but does not know that she is.

‘The waistcoated owl had something in its beak.’

Sinnie nods her head, remembering.

‘At first I thought it was the body of a mouse, all limp like a drawstring purse that has nothing in it. The owl bowed its head and laid the gift on the floor at my feet. Then the three owls did dance together. I do not recall if there was music when they did this, but there were colours in the dark space behind them and I felt as though I was dancing too.’

Sinnie’s face is flushed. As though she really has been dancing. She looks at the window. The curtains are not quite closed. Maybe that is why she blushes pink. Maybe she thinks she has been seen. Maybe she thinks something is revealed.

‘Owls do represent wisdom and learning. I have sometimes thought that Struan Courtald is a clever man. But what he is doing in my dream I do not know. As for the gift he has laid at my feet, the dancing did distract me from discovering what it was. Maybe it was just a mouse, as is the way of owls.’

Sinnie reads over what she has written. Then she sets aside the pen and the blue leatherbound notebook. She turns out the light and lays her head back on the pillow. Could be there is a reason that she does not remember what it was that the owl in the shiny buttoned waistcoat laid at her feet. She closes her eyes, but she does not sleep.

Climbing out of despair and into Port Brokeferry

(Have been in the 'Slough of Despond'... a second computer disaster... on my rescued computer with new clean hard drive... nothing on the screen... and again I had neglected to back up... 42,ooo words of new children's novel in there... thought I'd lost it all again... Transpires to be a problem with my screen... the computer is getting old and beyond its natural life and everything is breaking down... but at least all my stuff is there. 

So here's a Port Brokeferry piece. The introductory thing to the second section, the second day, Tuesday. It's a bit of Port Brokeferry history, to convince the reader that it exists as a place. The next piece will follow real soon.)

PORT BROKEFERRY June 17^th, 1882

THERE ARE GIANTS AMONGST US

They say giants roamed the earth in days past. Imagine the land buckled by earthquakes under their dancing feet. See stones tossed into the air, as though giants were at play, and the stones crashing against the sides of houses, the sides of hills. The sea was as rough as this and as hard. It was as though not just giants but gods sported there, careless of the smallness of man. On such a night boats do well to stay close to their berths, anchored in safest water. Fishermen do best to huddle over their home-fires spinning stories of heroes and big fish never caught. June 17^th, 1882 was not a night for casting nets or sailing forth into the history books.

Yet three men from Port Brokeferry are to be honoured by Queen Victoria for the part they played in a daring sea rescue on this night. Putting to sea when others shook their heads and rolled their frighted eyes, Finlay Hart, Hugh Preston, and Gavin Gladwell, with no thought to their own safety and in answer to a distress call, embarked upon an astonishing adventure.

A ship had run aground on The Snag, a jagged series of rocks some three miles out to sea from Port Brokeferry. That should have been the end of the story. The world should have woken to wreckage washed up on the shore and bodies bloated and pale fished from the water. But that was not how this story was to be written.

Thirty men from HMS Fellowship owe their lives to the small crew of The Best Foot Forward. Risking their own lives and their own boat, the three fishermen put forth from Port Brokeferry a little after midnight. It is not enough to say that they knew these waters – even for them in such weather what was familiar was made a stranger to them. It was, they said afterwards, the hand of God that led them to The Snag that night. It was the hand of God that pulled the crew of HMS Fellowship from the boiling sea with the loss of but one and brought them all safely back to Port Brokeferry.

Stories should hereafter be told round the fires of the less brave, and songs sung, for here are giants among men. Finlay Hart, Hugh Preston and Gavin Gladwell will receive the highest peacetime honour and a pension for life for the service they gave to their Queen and their country on that night.

(Extract from ‘The Times’ - 23^rd June, 1882)

It Feels Like Christmas!

Pleasanter news: First - Vanessa Gebbie describes my three flashes posted under the title 'The Mad Have The Loudest Voices' (see below) as 'fantastic writing'. This still means something to me that she can like my work.

Second - have just been informed that I have won the 'Southport Writers' Circle Short Story Competition' with a piece called 'The Boy Who Stayed At School' - inspired by seeing a black and white photograph of a woman taken shortly after the Aberfan mining disaster. "This is a beautifully written piece, characterised by restraint and subtlety... very impressive.' These are the judge's words, not mine. Full report and results will go up sometime this week.

Third - and a bit sad this too - I was in Borders book shop. The one I think of as mine. And of course it is closing down and the shelves are emptier than they used to be. But there, in the children's department, something I always dreamed of finding: my book on the shelf. My hand was shaking when I lifted it down to check that it really was there.

THE MAD HAVE THE LOUDEST VOICES!

(Ok, enough with the real world stuff. I return here to the thing I do that is the best that I do. I was good at other things once, but now I write. Below are three flashes all on the same thought, like beads on the one thread. They are examples of writing from the heart and putting something of myself into the work. But they are fictions, too, and fictions first. In a few days I will return to Port Brokeferry, a happier place for me to play in.)

GALL

There’s a voice that he uses. Soft at first, and plain, as though he means no harm to anyone. He is confident that he will be heard. He stands tall on a raised platform and beckons those passing to come listen to what he has to say. And the people stop, trusting this gentle voice in their community.

There is ash or silver in his hair and his face is lined with the years he has lived. He is the voice of experience, he tells them, and so he is to be believed. The people nod to show that they do believe.

There is a woman, he says. Her heart as black as the dark at the bottom of the well where drowned kittens in sacks were found last Sunday. Black as the charred bones of the murderer, Merkel, burnt to death in his own house and some said it was the hand of god was at work there. And this black-hearted woman, he says, calls on Hecuba in her sleep and she makes mischief for the villagers and casts spells to hurt those she takes against.

The crowd shake their heads and the words in their mouths are all stone and sting and fright.

And this woman is one we call friend and neighbour, he says. A woman we have heaped blessings on and given prayers to. For which she pays us back with curses and witchery.

There, it has been said. A murmur runs through the crowd, like fire when it is set to the fields in autumn after harvest. He knows he has them now and in a voice growing more strident and hectoring he details the wrongs suffered by the villagers. Orchards that did not bear good fruit; hives where all the bees were dead and no honey stored by for the winter; monies lost from the pockets of drunk men; bitter words exchanged between those who were lovers before. All this and more he lays at the feet of Hecuba’s whore. That’s what he calls this woman, and the people raise their fists in the air and add their own grievances to the voice of the grey haired old man.

He is pleased at what he hears.

Time was that this silver haired man and this woman might have shared the same bed. Recent time. He bestowed favours on the woman and smiled on her and wrote her sweet words on expensive paper. They sat together in silent rooms sometimes, the man holding her hand in his or stroking her hair as though she was a child. And at last kisses were exchanged, his tongue pushed into her mouth, and his rough hand and quick was under her skirts. It was not what she wanted and so she dared to protest and say him ‘no’. But the man does not tell the people this, does not reveal the spite in what he does now. The people gathered outside on the village green hear only what he wants them to hear.

And he names her then. Points a finger to where she lives. A hush falls on the gathering. Solid as stone and heavy as the quiet laid on the world before a storm. He fixes the people with his grey eyes, looks deep into the faces of everyone there. He spits on the grass, but the taste is bitter still in his mouth. He knows that this is the moment and all he has to do is wait.

Suddenly there is a great noise, the voices of everyone raised as one. Loud as the trumpet blast that felled the walls of Jericho, all clamour and indignation and bile. And the hand of god turns hard against the Widow Judith as it did against Merkel. That is the way of things.

The Right Reverend John Smith sees his work done. He watches the backs of the people as they move away from where he stands. He nods his head and is satisfied.  

THE SHUNNED

She stands in the pulpit, raised above us, ranting like a good ‘un. Pointing the sharp stab of her finger in the air and accusing everyone there of sin. She is the upright pillar of our community. She does good deeds, conspicuously, so everyone can see; and she has suffered personally, and she makes sure we see that, too. Gives her the right that does, to beat us over the head with her tablets of stone and her one, two, three commandments of thou shalt nots. Thou shalt not cross me. Thou shalt not do what I would not do. Thou shalt not steal from others in the community but especially not from me.

The congregation shifts a little in the pews. Nodding to each other. Agreeing with what she says. After all she is the voice we all listen to, the voice we put our faith in. And she has the power to crush us with a wave of her hand or a look. That’s what it feels like at least. And so we nod to the people left and right of us and everyone is witness to our nodding.

But though I do as the rest do, there is a secret I knows. How I can tell it, I am at a loss to say. For saying it out loud would risk her wrath and the finger pointing at me then and her stare as sharp as pins. But I knows. I have seen it with my own eyes. What she has done. And it is a sin against her own commandments.

But who would listen to my small voice when hers is so loud? Who would pay heed to me when she is what holds our community together?  We know this because she tells us it is so. ‘I am the way and the light.’ And even if the people did listen, is this what I would want for her or for us? To bring the pillar down and the whole roof of the church with it.

‘And you, Tobias, how do you plead?’ she says.

And Tobias, old in years to be sinning, kneels before the congregation and prays for mercy.

‘But you have stolen from us. Taken what was ours and claimed it as your own. Words from my mouth have found place in Tobias’ mouth and he has boasted them his.’

And Tobias wants to make defence of himself. I can see that he does. He starts to speak, but thinks better of it. All this written plain in his face. He bites his tongue and bows his head.

She senses victory. It is something she recognises. She stands straight and tall. Beautiful, like an avenging angel, her hair fanned out as if she is facing a great wind and standing firm.

‘Out,’ she says. Just that. It is enough.

And Tobias slumps a little lower on his knees. The weight of the world on his shoulders it looks like, and the weight too hard to bear. And she in the pulpit looks down on us all, for some sort of affirmation of what she has said. And one by one we turn our backs to Tobias till he is alone and shunned. He gets up from his knees and walks from the gathering. I can hear him as he leaves, the scuff and scuff of his feet. The door closes hard behind him and will open no more to his knock.

But I knows a secret. I knows that she does not keep her own commandments. For she takes from others in the community. Pretends she doesn’t, but I have seen her with her cloth covered wicker basket taking small bits from here and small bits from there. Sometimes not so small. Whole things sometimes. Gives them a new face perhaps, but not so full a disguise that I do not know what she has done and from where she has taken what is now hers. She is as guilty as Tobias. I know she is. But who is there would believe what I say? I do not want to believe it myself. Except for Tobias’ sake and for the sake of every other outcast she has given name to. So I write it all down and seal those words in a white paper wallet. I drop it into the collector’s plate when it is passed round and I wait.

I do not know what difference it will make. People believe what they want to believe. But I wait.

THE STONE THROWERS

Of course, they knew her. They all did. Some part of her at least. The girl she had been. Years back. Picking up dropped stalks of wheat in the fields. Or potatoes out of the mud. Or apples from the trees. And the young men trying to catch her eye.

‘Twas Oren who threaded flowers in Esther’s hair one summer evening and the first to kiss her under the moon. Sweet as strawberries, Oren said afterwards, making more of it than it ever was. And the men in The Stag all nudge and wink, and dreaming into their cups that she’d lain with them in the tall grass, or that she would some day.

Oren might have had the first kiss, but it was Coop who called her to his bed. Stayed together for seven years before it was over, Esther and Coop. Two children from their union, a boy and a girl to feed, and so she returned to the fields in search of work. By then there were other girls turning men’s heads in the village.

Harper was seen some nights, sneaking out of Esther’s house, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. His purse a little lighter, his wife said, the money that was hers by right putting food into the mouths of another man’s children . But Harper denied everything. In church, he did. ‘I swear to God.’ His palms held up and his face all false innocence.

And  one morning Esther was discovered pissing in Amos’ field. It was the year the crops failed. Amos drunk for months before that day. Drunk when he should have been working, drunk afterwards, but he blamed her. Said there was a spell cast on his fortunes. Everything pissed away. Truth in that, some. But then he pointed the finger at her and muttered ‘whore of the devil’ and Harper agreed.

It was a bad year. Everyone suffers then. Church was fuller than before and everyone praying for mercy and a better year ahead. Even Amos was there. Dressed in his second best suit, his hair slicked back, and his face had seen a razor that morning. Something respectable he looked like.

And after church the men who had dropped bits of pennies into the collection tray and were not happy that they had, these men looked over their shoulders at Esther, and they spat at her feet when she passed, and they could not see a better day with her in it.

So they lined up in front of her house. The stone throwers. All spit and curse, and brandy making them brave as fools. Weighing stones in their fists. Oren and Coop and Amos amongst them, and Harper, too, and every man that once had dreamed his hand beneath her dress when she was a girl. They all knew her and today they would put their world to rights.

Next year would be a better year for everyone. That’s what they said when they had done. A better year for everyone – except a boy and girl, thin as sticks, seen begging for food at the church door.

Not Too Clever

And still she rants and rants. Making me into a misogynist now. This is clearly absurd... she softens this by saying that having met me I probably do this unintentionally... what rubbish! I do not target women... that women make up the greater part of writing groups is a fact. But I am accused of taking from an american male writer too, by this same person who says I take advantage of only women. I did once think this person must be clever, for her writing is good. Now I am not so sure.

Her story 'The Collector' owes a greater debt than simply the borrowing of the profession of a central character as she originally claimed. Side by side her story and Carver's are similar enough to draw attention. Yes there are differences. But the arc of the story, the unattractive character of the salesman, the man who does not want the demonstration, the salesman leaving with an envelope of something that does not belong to him, the demonstration itself... all of this owes something to Carver.

In the story I am supposed to have 'stolen', all of my characters are different, the settings are different, the subject of the story is different, the voice is totally different. But there is enough that is the same that if they were side by side then the similarities would be seen. I did not try to hide that. Posted it first on Fiction Workhouse where I knew it would be 'recognised'. Either I am on a self destruct mission or I truly do feel that what I was doing was a legitimate part of the creative act. I choose not to post it in public again because there are enough people out there who would wish me ill (who already call me bad without any more foundation than the say so of others) and so would crucify me on the similarities and would ignore the very great differences.

This ranting woman may differ in her views from me, as may some of her other women friends, (and I do not call them man-haters for that) but if there was a spectrum for this sort of 'borrowing' thing, all writers would be on it and, I contend, this ranting writer and myself would be pretty close to each other on that spectrum. 

The synaesthesia that is the main thrust of my 'stolen' story and provides all the surprises and 'playfulness' in my story does not, as she claims, figure in the story I am supposed to have stolen from... not at all. This ranting woman says that there is a moment in this 'source' story by her writer friend where the main character, having been struck by lightning, touches the grass and says 'green' and then reels off a further three colours. She thinks this is the source of my synaesthesia in my story and so another theft. This is clearly absurd. A preposterous attempt to make me more of a thief as deflection against her own 'borrowings' being revealed. The man in this other story has holes in his brain, has trouble remembering his own name. When he touches the grass and says 'green' he is not having a synaesthetic experience... he is searching for the word for what it is he touches, sensing that he has lost the word. When he reels off a further three colours he is not experiencing the grass as a set of shifting rainbow colours, as a synaesthetic might... he is searching for the right word for what it is... green, being something right about the grass, he searches the colours... his brain is just so riddled with holes. The inspiration for my story was, as I have said again and again, my son reporting to me that Synaesthesia sometimes results from an individual being struck by lightning... my son knew I had an interest in synaesthesia. That was the beginning of my story.

And now this ranting woman condemns me for stealing from real life... I read something on someone's blog, turned it into a flash to cheer that person up, was thanked warmly for it and then subbed the flash to a magazine and it was published. Isn't that what writers do? This woman does not herself write in a vacuum. She is prey to all sorts of influences - her reading not least of all, and her life too. ALL writers are. And I am afraid that I am guilty of that too.

And she insists on continuing to lie about me. I was never asked to leave my writing group.She knows that. I have said it again and again. Indeed, the opposite is true: I was asked to stay, to reconsider my decision to leave. I brought energy to the group and excitement and hard work... everything I later brought to Fiction Workhouse where within months I was put in charge while the head honcho took a sabbatical... why me? Because I worked as hard as the hardest member of that group; because I was thoughtful and kind and the voice of reason (she even said that to me on more than one occasion); and because I was capable in so many ways... (she falls out with people a lot, or so it seemed to me and to others, and I had to pour oil on troubled waters when she was gone! Artists are allowed to be temperamental and she was forgiven a lot because she is also sometimes generous.)

A little learning is a dangerous thing - I think that is a common saying. I beg to differ is another. I differ from this ranting writer, not in what I do as a writer, but in what I admit to and what I believe is legitimate creatively. We are allowed to disagree. I have apologised, not because I think what I have done is wrong. I have apologised because I do not like to hurt people... women especially... sexist that may be... but in a warm and kind way... and that is something I have from my father. I could not be further from a misogynist! 

I will not ever believe the things this writer says about people in the real world - the people she now calls friends publicly, she does not always esteem privately. And seeing the lies she says about me... well, just as I don't trust newspapers and what they say, so...

SETTING SOME THINGS STRAIGHT, OR STRAIGHTER

(This is a companion blog post to the one below called 'The Collector')

OCD or not OCD

Firstly, OCD is not something you either have or don’t have like a wooden leg. It is a spectrum on which we all figure to some degree. I have described Aubrey Bell as ‘a bit OCD’ and that probably needs explanation. Carver in his story draws our attention to the carpet in the house through Aubrey. It is the first thing we are drawn to notice in the house: ‘His eyes had lighted then dimmed at the sight of the carpet. He shuddered.’ Aubrey wears slippers in this house he is visiting, not because he has corns one feels. Then he looks at the carpet again and pulls his lips. Then he comes over all feverish, as if it is the carpet that has brought on this sudden onset of illness. He sits down on the sofa and stirs at the carpet with his slippered foot waiting for an aspirin. It is clear that Aubrey has to some extent fixated on this carpet and its awfulness. That, I think, puts him on the spectrum somewhere.

But all that is deflective noise. As I intimated in my blog post below, when you set the stories side by side the similarities are as obvious as the differences. A debt is owed to Carver. The writer of the inspired story concedes something of that. And again I emphasise that this is, in my view, all a legitimate part of the creative process.

IN POSSESSION OF OTHER PEOPLE’S STORIES

This same writer keeps insisting that I have her work. As has been made clear to her, a computer crash earlier in the summer saw me lose a great deal of stuff from my computer. I have made several references to it on this blog. I have had to rely on the help of closer friends and friendly editors and competition organisers to retrieve come of what I had lost. Some will never find its way back to me. Indeed, I asked this complaining writer, who was in possession of much of my work, to help me by returning some of it and she has not even had the courtesy to reply. Instead she keeps casting aspersions against my successful stories. I am a good writer. Even she has admitted that. And my stories are mine as much as 'The Collector' is hers.

LEAVING MY FIRST WRITERS’ GROUP

I did not, contrary to what this same writer claims, HAVE to leave my previous writing group. Indeed the opposite was the case. I chose to leave and did so despite some of the writers there wanting me very much to stay and asking me to reconsider. I left without malice and I left because the time was right for me. It is true that I left after a debate over the ownership of ‘ideas’. If a person brought to the group a discussion about vampires, it was felt that no one else should then be able to write a vampire story without at first at least asking the person who brought the subject to the group if it was ok. This allowed that the person could say ‘no’ and I did not think writing should be bound in that way. I accepted that this was a difference of opinion and thought it a good time to depart with grace on all sides.

ME AND MRS, MRS JONES,MRS JONES, MRS JONES…

There is this other writer I have pissed off. She was once not so well and on her blog she was often in a low mood when she should have been high. I felt sorry for her. Then I read something on her blog that fired me to write a flash. I wrote it for her. To cheer her up. It was something she did. I posted the flash in a comment on her blog and it seemed to do what it was supposed to. She commented back: ‘Douglas - what a beautiful flash, I am honoured to have inspired you, thank you.’ I then sent the flash off to a wider public by subbing it to a magazine. It was accepted and published. And now I am a thief, having stolen from Mrs Jones’ life! Go figure!

DEFLECTION

I did not intend that my blog post below should deflect from what I had actually done. Indeed, I thought I had admitted what I had done in the post as well as in an earlier post that I referenced below. It was intended to show that what I did was not so criminal as some have made it out to be with their talk of solicitors (quite foolish given the expense and given that their involvement, aside from causing me some personal anguish, was totally unnecessary… and I can quite understand the grudge that would result from getting nowhere at the cost of £1000!) I maintain that what I did was very similar to something done by the writer making the biggest noise about all of this – that was what I wanted to say.

This weekend I read on another writer’s blog (The very same Mrs Jones, I think) that she had struggled with a story for some years and had not solved how to write it. Then she read someone else’s work and was ‘inspired’ to use a different structure for her story and it has worked! That’s how art works.

The writer of the Carver-inspired story says that her account of a vacuum cleaner demonstrator at his job is similar to Carver’s because that’s what vacuum cleaner demonstrators do. No argument here; when a man gets struck by lightning, it is likely that he will end up in hospital. If the writer uses a reverse chronology to structure the same story, then it is likely that the story will begin in a hospital. But I am not allowed that as justification for my story that owes a debt to… yes, Mrs Jones.

As a teacher who deals with pupil fallouts all the time, I know very keenly that there are always at least two sides to any ‘story’. People would do well to bear that in mind when they read the blog posts of others – even those who rest in ivory towers waving their hands in the air and making the loudest noises to be heard. 

THE COLLECTOR

THE COLLECTOR

I have remained fairly quiet on this subject, but since big noises are being made against me again it seems I am called upon to once more defend myself. I am a writer. I write even when no one is there to read what I write. Witness that I have on this site published more than 18 flashes in the past weeks that have received not one single comment and that I have a whole novel of these planned and will continue to post them here. It is the writing process that is most important to me.

As a writer I am also a reader and in my reading I collect things, both intentionally and unintentionally. In life I do the same. Something overheard on a bus, a family story or something seen in the news or on the tv. Some of these collected things quite obviously end up in the writing. That’s natural too. And sometimes they are changed beyond all recognition and sometimes they are not.

There is a line between what is allowed and what is not allowed when it comes to ‘borrowing’ in your writing. It is not always a clear cut line, hence the ongoing debate and the falling into disgrace of some good writers. I am a good writer. I regularly win competition prizes for my work (more than 80 competitions have recognised my work in the past three and a half years). Yet my reputation is now in question. I have never stolen another writer’s words and passed them off as my own. It is in the realm of ideas that I am called upon to justify myself.

One of the biggest 'noises' raised against me earlier this year confessed to borrowing herself from the great and the established in the writing world and admitted that examples of this kind of borrowing were “legion” in her work and legitimate. I want to learn and so I looked into her examples. She said she had borrowed the profession of a character of hers from a character in one of Raymond Carver’s stories and that the title of her story was a nod in the direction of Carver – though she also somewhere admitted that she would change the title of her story if she was to do it again.

I read Carver’s story. It is about a vacuum cleaner demonstrator called Aubrey Bell. He is an unattractive character, fat and bulky with a ring around his head where his hat had been. And he is pushy in the manner of salesmen and over familiar. He arrives at a house to give a free demonstration. The lady of the house is not there. There is a man who lounges about on the sofa. The man does not want the demonstration but the demonstrator is very insistent. Aubrey Bell is also a bit OCD in the area of cleanliness, feels sick and headachey as a response to the house. Bell puts the vacumm cleaner together, all the hoses and scoops and bits, and fits a filter to the machine. Then, raising a hand to quieten any disagreement, he pushes his way through to the bedroom and vacuums the pillows on the bed and the mattress, changing the filter as he goes and showing the man, with undisguised distaste, what has been collected, the dust and hair and grainy things (“He pinched some of the dusty stuff between his fingers”). Then he vacuums the carpet in the livingroom. He dismantles his machine and puts it all away in a big case and leaves having pocketed a letter that had arrived for a Mr Slater, the absent householder. The man in the house is not sure that Bell should take what is not his, but Aubrey Bell leaves having made no sale, but having completed his demonstration.

I then compared this story to the one by the writer I knew. The title does indeed nod towards Carver and she has used the profession of vacuum cleaner demonstrator for her story. But to say that is all that links the two stories is a little disingenuous. The arc of the story is the same. A vacuum demonstrator arrives at a house, unpacks his machine, vacuums the livingroom and the mattress in the bedroom, changing filters between jobs to demonstrate the dirt he finds (he “takes the filter away from the hose with two fingers, holding it up for inspection”). He makes no sale and leaves with “a white paper wallet” of stuff that does not belong to him, despite the quiet protests of the person he has demonstrated the vacuum to.

The character of the demonstrator, compared to a spider in this second story and completely bald, owes something to Aubrey Bell in his unattractiveness and his pushy salesmanship, vacuuming the man’s chair (where he has been sitting) against the man’s protests and then completing the job with the mattress in the bedroom.

But we must be careful before we cry ‘thief’.

I read in an article somewhere* something about the ‘imitative element’ in the creative process. That it is something normal. We all do it. It is obvious that the visual arts are comfortable with this idea (see an earlier post of mine below); but writing does it too. I recently challenged a writer to say that she had never been ‘influenced’ by something she had read in another’s work, that she had never found an idea in someone else’s writing, an idea that she then explored in her own writing. I knew I was on safe ground in declaring that I was certain that she had. Note that I am not calling any of this plagiarism, or any of the above either, because I think this sort of ‘imitative element’ is a legitimate part of the whole process of creating and writing. Of course straight copying of another’s words is something different and something we should stand against. But we must be careful when judging a work and looking for instances of plagiarism. The same article I read pointed towards a warning by GK Chesterton which I think speaks sense: ‘To see the similarities, without seeing the differences, seems a dangerous game.’

And there are differences in the story that nods towards Carver’s with its title. The woman missing from Carver’s story is here and the marriage, though unstable is intact. The OCD qualities of Aubrey Bell have been transferred to the woman. The voice is original and not even Carver-esque. There is a greater emphasis on the dirt and the grime. But read the two stories side by side and the debt is there and obvious.

So I am not any wiser as to what is acceptable in the area of creative borrowing.

I have written over 150 stories and over 400 flashes. I am being called to account for two stories and one flash. The flash was independently judged against the work that it was claimed I had borrowed from and the publisher saw fit to publish it without any sense of risk. Ask why and there can only be one answer. The aggrieved writer even admitted somewhere that it was on reflection changed enough for it not to be plagiarism… but only after she had kicked up a storm and sent her story for comparison to the original competition judge.

As to my two stories that owe a debt to other works, I have dealt with them in a post below. In one I do use the structure of the original and the climactic moment, and the opening setting and (in a nod to the original) a name for my central character that is similar to the original. I have made no attempt to hide my influences. But my character is a married man, where the original is a student. My character’s marriage is failing and he is having an affair. In the original the ‘boy’ is timid and tentative and on the brink of beginning a relationship with a young girl. Aside from the opening hospital setting, all the other settings are different and all the characters are different. The student suffers memory loss from having been struck by lightning; the married man suffers synaesthesia form being struck by lightning. The other author got her idea for this from an article in a science journal; I got my idea from my son who reported to me that he had just read on the net that Synaesthesia was sometimes caused by a person being hit by lightning. Synaesthesia is the clever twist to my story providing a secondary climax. The voice is different in both.

If you look for the similarities without seeing the differences, then I am as guilty as the vacuum cleaner story writer has to be.

I have removed the offending story from public view out of deference to the writer who feels wronged by my borrowing and is very upset. I have apologized to her, for the hurt caused - I am sorry for that. I do not think my borrowing was wrong, but am prepared to accept that others will think so. I am resolved to not borrow in this way again. I can do no more to make this right.

So why are two people so doggedly set on shaming me further publicly for this, even to the point where I am constantly misrepresented and made to appear the worst of all creatures.

One has spent almost £1000 in legal fees getting no greater assurances from me than I had already given to her in e-mails. She sees me continuing to succeed in writing competitions and does not think that fair. The other, I had the temerity to question on an editorial decision she made on a project she had high hopes for. This project has since floundered and she bears me a grudge. This is of course conjecture and if I do these people wrong in this, then I apologise. At least I have the good grace not to name these people in my blog. Because I do have values and am not the beast they would have you believe. 

(* I am sorry that I cannot point you to the actual article which expounded at some length on the imitative element in art and literature)

News and The End of Monday in Port Brokeferry

(This summer I had a catastrophic computer crash. The day of the meltdown was the end of a very productive week - I had just completed the writing of three stories. I was confident that one of them was extremely good and one very very good, and one just ok... and they were lost as soon as they were written... and no notes to guide me. 

When I picked myself up from this disaster three weeks later, I sat down and redid two of the stories. One I think is better than the original. But the extremely good one, though I managed to rewrite it, just did not feel quite as magical... good but not quite what it had been. Well this not quite so good as the original story has just been placed high in a competition... so that feels quite nice. It was inspired by an old black and white photograph. 

Below is the last flash for the Monday in Port Brokeferry. Many of the important characters have now been introduced - many but not all. I shall take a short break from this project until I have shaped Tuesday into something, then I will be posting again. Enjoy this one which is a sort of summary for some of the interesting characters at the end of the day.)

A PORT BROKEFERRY MONDAY EVENING

Callum shuts his shop. He is tired. He has a bag of bread that has not sold, or rather bread he has not tried to sell. On his way home he stops at old Tom’s. Not to listen to his sleep-talking now, but to drop off bread. He knows Tom has not left the house. He gifts bread to Mad Martin, too, though it is Athol Stuart who answers the door and gives Callum thanks. He stops at the gate to his own garden and smokes a last cigarette before going inside.

In the police station Grace is busy with the duster and the polish, making everything like new. She has the keys so she can lock up when she is finished. She sneaks a look in the book, just to see what’s what in Port Brokeferry. She searches for something in particular. It is as she expected.

In The Ship Guthrie waits for Magnus to close up the bank. He stares at a chessboard all set for play. In his head he is rehearsing his opening moves. He has a book that he has been studying. It is a book about a famous Russian chess player. Lachlan Davie is there too, in The Ship. Nursing his first pint and grinning like a cat that’s got the cream. His hair is short and over the back of his hand, written in black, are the words of a children’s nursery rhyme.

Christine is naked in her bedroom, trying by the tilt of two mirrors to read everything that Lachlan has written across her back and her shoulders. There are some words she will never see, scrawled into the hair at the back of her neck. ‘Lachlan lies with Christine and wishes the new day would never come.’ Written so small that it is difficult to read even if Christine’s mirror could show that he had been there.

Corinne watches from her bedroom window as Mr Dodie Bredwell cycles home with a bag of books on his back. He is laughing at something, his red scarf flying behind him and the squeak squeak of his bicycle turning heads in the street.

Eileen sees the lights on in the bank still. She knows he will be there past closing. She checks her watch. He is later tonight, she thinks. She looks right and left in case she is seen. She waits, hoping for his ‘Hello, Eileen.’ Just so she can give him back, ‘Hello, Magnus’. She wonders if he remembers. That night. Under the streetlights. She thinks maybe he was too drunk and that he woke without any memory of what had been.

Edwin checks the ropes. Makes sure Finn’s boat is secure. He listens to the movement of the water against the hull, the soft slap-slap of it. The air though is still. Seagulls float like grey ghosts in the darkening sky above him. ‘They say that all those fishermen that drown do rise again in the seabirds that are hatched. If I was ever to come back, that would be the way. Not of the sea or of the land, but of both at the same time. Look into their eyes and you see something like wisdom there.’ That was what Finn said to Edwin once.

Alice Greyling sits in her kitchen. She has set the table for two. There is a light on in her window. Like she is expecting someone. She is singing in a small voice.