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.