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...
8 comments:
A plethora of e-mails and blog comments! That's what she accuses me of now and how she now justifies her current attacks on me.
I have checked my sent box - since the beginning of August I have sent only three e-mails (excepting the ones I sent to this woman last night in response to hers to me! And one I sent to her last week in response to her post about 'doing a Bruton' which I thought unneccessary and cruel... and an example of HER keeping this thing going!)...
She says I again target women only! This person is clearly not the full shilling. The three e-mails I sent, aside from the ones mentioned above, were sent to Nik Perring (Male last time i looked!) a brief exchange when I read that he had said something about me on a blog site that was wrong and I was putting him right.
I have entered blog competitions on Tom Vowler's site (another Male) and on Nicola Morgan's site (now there's a female). I have tried to participate in Sarah Salway's 50 word snaps, simply for the joy of writing.
Aside from that I have been fairly quiet and quite absent from communicating with others except through the posting I have done on my blog. I entered into this current discussion because I was tired of being this woman's bad guy and because I do not think she has played fair.
She has offered me a silly award on her site. This award is just another example of her bitterness and her nasty way. 'I am not kind' she once wrote to me... and in that she speaks true...
I do not accept her award.
She tells me to go away.
If she stops being so publicly awful about me and there is nothing else then I will indeed go away... from her. But right now it is this woman who is keeping this going.
Wonder at the psychology of the middle aged woman who so hounds a person for doing a wrong that is no bigger than the wrong she does herself. (and I use the word 'wrong' quite wrongly - for I do not believe either this woman or myself are wrongdoers in our writing.)
I tried hanging this post on her site. I wonder if she will post this and what snippy riposte she will give it to make me appear an even greater madman.
The voice of sense and reason she once called me. Herself she once called mad. Go figure!
And she accuses me further of being responsible for the closing of an online project... one that had my work on it... because my work could no longer be trusted. The editor of this site had made a decision about my character back in May and blogged about it in June. But she continued hanging things on her collaborative fiction site till the 14th July. And did not physically remove my work till even later.
Nothing is all that it seems.
This editor bore me a grudge for the dent I put in her reputation as an editor when I questioned a decision she had made. As a result of my public amazement at her editorial failings, many saw that she was not the strong and fair editor she liked to think she was. And I think this grudge might have influenced everything she has done to me.
This editor removed my work from the site to announce again that I was somehow a criminal. And she pretends to be a friend to me in private e-mails!!
These are not nice people... not pantomine villains either, nor the three witches out of Macbeth... you see, they are not wholly bad, for there are good things that they do...
I am inclined to see the good in people... naively, some would say... there's a failing if you want one.
And now she has removed the award... out of some last minute feeling of softness for me... I doubt it. More likely someone has told her that she is mad, a little, in doing what she did.
The sly thing about blogging is that the blog master/mistress is in control of what appears on the blog and can even rub out what was once there and it is as if it had never been.
I woke this morning wondering if the people close to Hitler knew he was mad, or if the mad being in charge means that people shift their measures so that it is the sane who appear crazy... after all, to do the sane and humane thing was to smuggle the jews out of Germany and in doing so risk your own life... would you be crazy in the eyes of the mad if you did this?
I hope to draw a line under my part in this mad conversation with this last comment. Tonight I will post some flash fiction just to put a close on this chapter. I can only hope that there are enough sane people out there who will see all of this for what it is and see her for what she is.
‘DOING A V’ (1)
FACT : She rants and raves like a woman filled up with scorn and gall; then she reflects and takes down from her blog the things that will make others see her as mad. No retraction or apology.
FACT : She accused me of misogyny. Everyone who knows me just laughs at that. She is clearly preposterous in claiming this.
FACT : She makes up a new theft that I am supposed to have done. Then when that is demonstrated to be nothing more than a fault in her intelligence, she quietly removes it.
FACT : This person’s words – there one minute and gone the next – are not to be trusted.
FACT : According to this woman (and since this has now been removed from her blog the truth of it might just be doubted) paid £1000 to solicitors to write two letters and she now bears a ‘grand’ grudge against me.
I see she has pruned more of the madness from her blog. But she still tries to give me her 'silly' and nasty award - just relocated it in an older blog post of hers. I should post this essay as something further on my blog but do not want to further clutter that place so am putting it into a comment just for those who are interested enough to be bothered.
And the untruths are still there. I will now go through her blog post line by line:
SHE SAYS: "Some of us continue to receive unsolicited emails and other messages from Douglas Bruton"...
I SAY: Only Nik Perring has received these e-mails and only when I discovered that he had posted an untruth about me on another site; and this mad ranting woman recently received one e-mail when she continued to say wrong and bitchily nasty things about me on her blog.
SHE SAYS: "He recently contacted Nik Perring, and used it to send taunts."
I SAY: I put Nik right on something he said and when he would not retract it I said that I thought he was a better person than that. Hardly taunts!
SHE SAYS: "I know he is also plaguing others with emails" –
I SAY: I'd like to know who, because my sent box is damn near empty for the past three months! More of her fabrications to make me appear bad!
'DOING A V' (2)
SHE SAYS: "Some history: I shared my work, and my knowledge, and my contacts with Bruton, as I would with any close colleague, believing him to have integrity."
I SAY: I do have integrity... and a lot more besides.
SHE SAYS: " I collaborated over an 80,000 word project," –
I SAY: This was something we both did… I did with her as much as she with me. (if we are comparing wordcounts I contributed in excess of 12,000 words more than she did to the project!). Both my writing and hers benefitted from it. I think she wrote some of her best work in this project... but then I have not seen her most recent work.
SHE ADDS: " and shared parts of my novel with him privately, for feedback." –
I SAY: And she received very useful and detailed and incisive feedback.
SHE SAYS: " I used his work to illustrate a text book chapter." –
I SAY: Or to put it another way, I generously gifted my work to her when she asked for it, gifted it free of any charge to help her illustrate an article for a text book.
SHE SAYS: "Some facts (all already aired publicly months ago.): He took a distinctive prize winning story published online by T H, met through me. He added a few details, and submitted the result to a competition, where it won a prize, and was also published online. Luckily, the similarities were picked up. He was challenged, and had ‘his’ story removed from the competition website." –
I SAY: This is a gross simplification of the situation and a misrepresentation of the truth. See my whole discussion of her lifting from Carver... perfectly legitimate in my mind, a part of the creative act... but she still tries to deny that what she has done is the same as what I did; it is no less. And I was the one who chose to remove the story from the competition site, and only because I did not wish to hurt further the feelings of another writer.
SHE SAYS: "He apologised in writing for this, saying, ‘all my misappropriations have been laid in public view now ……they are not many, but they have been more than they should have been.' - He also apologised for causing T H and others ‘hurt’." –
I SAY: This has already been covered by me... I genuinely believe that I am no better or no worse than this ranting writer. She admits that the kind of borrowing I have unveiled in her story 'The Collector' is 'legion' in her work. Read both her story and Carver's and you will see what she has done. Don't take my word for it; and certainly don't take hers.
SHE SAYS: "Bruton took multiple elements from an unpublished story of mine, used them in a flash and submitted the result to another competition. That flash was commended, and published." –
I SAY: And this ranting writer submitted her story (the one I am supposed to have stolen from) and asked the judge of the competition to compare the two. The fact that the publisher went ahead and published my flash says more than anything I could say! This ranting writer later admitted that my flash was different enough for it not to be theft. Actually, she made all of these wild allegations even though she had not seen the version of the flash I had submitted to the competition!
SHE SAYS: "Bruton has used my novel character ideas, shared privately again, for himself, without asking" –
I SAY: I have no clue what this is, unless it is the same thing as above and refers to my flash. Perhaps this is another attempt to win sympathy from her blogpals and in the process to condemn me. I have not used any characters of hers from any novel.
'DOING A V' (3)
SHE SAYS: "Bruton was asked to leave a writing group called Pentlands Writers, for doing the same things" –
I SAY: I was never so asked. Indeed when I made the decision to leave, I was asked to reconsider, I was asked to stay. When I would not, I was told I would be missed... and I believe from all accounts that I was missed.
SHE SAYS: "Bruton also précised part of Paul Auster’s novel, Travels in the Scriptorium, and submitted it to a competition at a magazine, where I was sub-editor. I hadn’t read the Auster, sadly." –
I SAY: Two things here: firstly my story is not a precis. It is an exploration of the idea of copying. A scriptorium was the place where monks copied manuscripts... but no copy was without something of the copyist inserted into the pages somewhere... that is the point. I have blogged about this elsewhere on my site. Secondly, I even inserted Paul (Auster) as a secondary character in the story and he took the central character to the edge of the story and back again. Maybe this was all a bit too clever for this ranting woman.
SHE SAYS: "I took legal action to try to protect my work from him, as he has many thousands of my words in his possession. He finally gave written assurances that he would misuse no more." –
I SAY: She got a solicitor to write two letters to me, paid almost £1000 for the pain, and got assurances that I had already given her in e-mails. But she continued to blow this whole act out of all proportion making others reading her blog think that some kind of impending court action was coming against me... all as some sort of spurious proof of all that she was saying about me.
SHE SAYS: " ‘Doing a Bruton’ remains in my vocabulary. It has nothing to do with taking inspiration, or furthering art. It means simply this: ‘taking the work of others and, thinly disguised, calling it your own.’ " –
I SAY: If I allowed myself to use her name on my blog I would call this 'doing a V'... because she does what I do... see all I have said about her borrowings from Carver. If 'thinly disguised' means changing the characters, the setting, the theme, the voice, then maybe I am guilty. ‘doing a V’ might, however, be misunderstood to mean lieing, or being not too clever, or being mad, or being so eaten up with bitterness.
SHE SAYS: "Meanwhile, as if to prove my point, he continues to write his own version of J’s collaborative project GB, which sadly closed because of him." –
I SAY: I recall when I first contributed to this online collaborative project, this ranting writer rebuked me for being involved with such a 'low brow' project, saying I was better than this and better than the writers contributing to this site. Now she says 'sadly'! It closed because the editor could no longer keep it going... I had already questioned her editorial credentials and she had demonstrated that she was not strong in this area. She kept it going for some time after I was no longer allowed to contribute. It seemed to be moving forward without me. It foundered because the editor decided it should and not because she had a trust problem with any of my pieces. And I have explained why I am doing my own thing with the characters I invented there. On top of this the idea of GB was not of itself original and found its inspiration in other online projects that J. was aware of – she acknowledged as much in her explanation of the inspiration for her project.
'DOING A V' (4)
SHE SAYS: "Bruton has a history of lifting work and ideas from writing colleagues. FACT." –
I SAY: Relative to my output, her claims are about a very few of my stories... and it's not that ideas are lifted, but rather that they are responded to... in precisely the way that this accusatory writer does herself (see all I have said on Carver). This is not lifting... and this ranting writer knows it isn't... but having ranted so loudly she cannot now easily recant... even when others will see what she has done with Carver in her own writing.
SHE SAYS: "He has a history of copying, as opposed to being inspired. FACT." –
I SAY: Another lie... no more copying than she does. I have never used another's words in my writing. I do not copy. I have no need to copy.
SHE SAYS: "He says it is fine to do this and that he will continue to do so. FACT" –
I SAY: What I actually say (and she is fully aware of what I have actually said, preferring to further misrepresent me to safeguard her claims and her reputation) is that I believe I have done no wrong, nothing less than been a creative writer... and I say I will in future be more careful about the people I mix with, the work I reads and the inspiration I respond to... in order to avoid the stings and slings and arrows of people in 'Glass Bubbles' who should not throw stones at writers who do more wrong than they do themselves.
FACT: this ranting writer cannot be trusted... she has admitted to me that she is not kind and that she is mad... she falls out with many people... she manipulates the words on her blog to her own ends... she is the one keeping this going, though she berates me for being the one who won't let this go... would she let it all go if she was being so villified and so publicly? She hangs lies up on her blog to damage the reputation of others and then removes them again so as not to come across as mad and bad and dangerous to know.
All good writers beware - get too close and she could 'do a V' on you... and it is not nice.
And now I have read a post on Sarah Salway's site... Christmas tip No. 3 - and it says 'Swallow Sour Words'... and I find I want to.
This ranting writer is a great writer. But when people do not read from the same page as her, or if they cross her, then heaven help them.
But she does good in the world too. And not just for writers. Like me, royalties from her first book are used to help others. She is generous with her work for all sorts of causes.
And so I here do now swallow my sour words. And I hope that the good that comes from all of this is not just that her writing and my writing gets better... but that there is less sourness on both sides.
By the way, all of this that you read here, that's as sour as I get... and that so rarely that I feel very uncomfortable having been made to feel this way.
Thinking sweeter thoughts now.
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