Theft or Not Theft

Noah built a boat in the Bible. When someone dies it is customary for a will to be read that disperses that dead person's belongings to his friends and close relatives. Names from myth and legend and literature carry 'meaning' and so writers will borrow these names to say something about their own characters. What am I talking about? Read on.

That mad woman is at it again. Now I am charged on her blog with something new. She says that she had to close down her writing workshop site because of me. To let you understand I was summarily ejected from the site when this woman decided I was ‘bad’ and no access allowed by me to any of my many pieces of work on the site. That should have meant that the site could continue. It has, after all, reconfigured itself under another name so is still operating in pretty much the same form as before.

This mad woman, who flings her frustration around making a sham of all her other ‘good’ qualities of tolerance and understanding and justice, was already withdrawing from the site she had set up. She had a sabbatical even when I was there, leaving me at the helm while she was away, and she came back only sporadically to participate in exciting projects that were initiated by myself and other members. That she is not part of this new set up is a decision she has made and not one that was necessarily shared by other members of her original site since some of them continue to work in the same way on this new site.

The truth is that after I was thrown out I did receive support from writers from this workshop place – more than this mad woman could know or ever will know. One who has shown me support has asked me not to publicly reveal his/her name because he/she is frigthtened of what this mad woman can do to a person’s reputation when she is angered. I can understand that fear. The sphere of influence of this mad woman feels very broad.

And what is it that I am supposed to have stolen from her? What exactly?

I wrote a flash fiction piece called ‘A Pebble From The River For Annie’ where, as penance, a woman called Annie slips a pebble in her shoe for a wrong that she does and walks forever after with a limp. This ‘idea’ I discovered later in a poem that this woman had written. It is not a new idea and so I do not claim ownership of it. She said in her defence that her poem had been workshopped some time before my story was read by her. But if it hadn’t, then this is the level of theft that this woman accuses me of: the theft of an idea that cannot be owned.

This woman wrote a story where a boat was being built and the builder had a name from Greek myth as a forename. (Just as Stephen Dedalus borrows his surname from mythology in Joyce’s ‘A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man’!) At the end of this woman’s story the body of a dead man (not the boat builder) was laid in the boat and his friends dropped farewell gifts into the boat before it was burned as a funeral rite. I read this piece of hers and studied it and gave her helpful detailed feedback on how the piece might be tightened. She had asked me to do this as she had with several of her stories. She commended me on my insights. Then some weeks later on a workshop site I did a flash fiction piece on the theme of ‘madness’. We were encouraged on the site (by this same mad woman mostly) to tackle some flash fiction writing exercises blind – like automatic writing… just setting the pen free on the page and not trying to control what we were writing too much… she even suggested doing it drunk to see what the creative inner voice threw up. I wrote a piece about a man called Noah who was mad with grief for he had just lost his wife. As part of that madness he built a boat in his front garden, and the neighbourhood children laughed and pointed at him and everyone thought him mad for there was no use for a boat far from any water as they were (some biblical influence there, I think).  I afterwards recognised that this had also some influence from the tv programme NCIS with Gibbs building his boat in a cellar – a boat that would be too big to get out without the demolition of the cellar…  all as part of his madness and grief over his lost wife and child. In my piece Noah put wheels on his boat and a sail. Before departing he dispersed all his belongings as gifts to his neighbours. Then the village wakes one morning to find the boat and Noah gone, his gifts to them on their front steps and wheel tracks as gouges in the front lawn of Noah’s house.

This woman’s claim is that I stole the idea of naming my character after a figure from myth from her; I stole the idea of a boat being built from her; I stole the idea of farewell gifts from her. That she claims ownership of these ‘ideas’ is patently absurd. These are things that cannot be owned. That her story may have been one of several influences somewhere in my head when I was writing I concede (along with a Terry Wogan morning programme I had listened to just prior to the writing of my piece and after which I made notes for the piece whilst sitting in my car). But that any of this could be counted as theft is clearly crazy. Only afterwards could I see where the seeds of my story were… and they were scattered across many fields. What is needed in this discussion of ownership of ideas is some sense. I wrote a post below called ‘Something Borrowed’ and I urge anyone interested in this matter to read Malcolm Gladwell’s essay referred to there.

I have already (see posts below on this blog) laid bare the borrowings this mad writer made from Raymond Carver’s writing in one of her stories. (borrowings that I think are a legitimate part of the creative process and so not, in my view, theft) I was led to discover these borrowings by her own admission that she had found inspiration in Carver. My ‘borrowings’ with my Noah story are much much smaller than hers with Carver – slight by comparison, and indeed owe more to a tv programme and the Bible than they do to her piece. My flash fiction story has been published in a competition anthology. This occurred after the mad writer challenged the publisher and sent him a copy of her piece. The publisher judged, quite rightly,  that there was no issue to answer and felt completely safe in publishing my story.

I said only recently on this blog that enough was enough on this matter and had resolved to say no more. Only this new charge has forced me to speak out again and she is back to calling me thief. If that I am, then she is too. I contend that I have not stolen from this writer and her claim that I have is patently mad.