Challenge to Karen Clarke et al

Been a way for a while. An accident at work escalated into something more serious and so ended up in hospital enduring two operations under general anaesthetic. Slow road to recovery through the school summer hols lies ahead. Feeling crap. So that’s where I’ve been, and may not feel much like being here online for a wee while, and when I am I won’t be so chipper… that’s the drugs talking.

Anyway, I have a lot to catch up with: missed some competition entries for June, which was a shame, but health is more important than that; got some comp results to check up on: and the matter of someone leaving a comment here a wee time back needs addressed.

I don’t get many comments here these days (you find out who your friends are when something goes wrong), but one person did drop in to comment on a post of mine. She made two comments actually, but the second was just to goad me into publishing the first. There was no need for the second: I posted Karen Clarke’s comment with a response and a challenge. If you are going to criticise me then the least you can do is to think the criticism through. Karen said I showed no remorse for the ‘wrong’ I did two years back. I pointed out that I had apologised, withdrawn the ‘offending’ story and resolved to work differently; what I did not do was admit that I had done wrong. I did not admit this because rationally I cannot admit this. I challenged Karen Clarke to say where the line should be drawn given that all writers pick up their influence from other writers and that all honest writers admit to borrowing. I am still awaiting Karen’s reasoned response. I don’t expect much.

I have asked other writers the same question and when they get down to it they admit to not having an answer. Personally, I sit in the camp where using someone else’s actual words is an actual crossing of the line, but the evidence around me, in all things creative (art, writing, music, dance, theatre and film) is that the borrowing of ideas is natural and all a part of the creative process. That explains why the copyright law does not prevent such borrowing, cannot prevent it.

So, Karen Clarke and any other writer worth his or her salt, tell me, if you can, where is the line of what is allowed and what is not when it comes to borrowing others’ ideas and making them your own Make your statement and make it fit what happened with Shakespeare and a million writers since. Make it reasoned and sensible. Mud-slinging is just dirty, Karen Clarke, so try something more cerebral.