Thursday 13 December 2012

PERMISSION


PERMISSION

So, a writer is struggling to write a novel. Has lots of wonderful bits and pieces but nothing to hang them on. Then, sitting in a car, waiting, the writer is visited by INSPIRATION in one of those out of the blue lightning bolt moments. The writer finds the first line: two short sentences, out of which the whole novel then grows and finds its central character.

What is interesting here is that ‘inspiration moment’. It illustrates how the creative imagination works. The writer, on thinking about that moment and the line that ‘just came’, later feels some familiarity in the line that has been jotted down. Then, after some searching, the writer finds that the line belongs to someone else and, with only a different name, is exactly the same. Isn’t that borrowing just what the creative brain does? Doesn’t that illustrate that a natural part of creativity is borrowing? A lesser writer might not have been self-reflective enough to discover where the line had come from. The same writer perhaps doesn’t appreciate that much of what he has written has its roots in ‘other stuff’.

I don’t know if the writer then asked the ‘owner’ of the original for permission to use the line, those two short sentences. But if the writer hadn’t, is this right? If the writer did, does this make the line in that writer’s novel different? If the writer hadn’t ever discovered the source for the inspiration-delivered line, is that an excuse for not calling this theft?

Thinking about this only begins to illustrate some of the problems of ownership of words or ownership of arrangements of words. What about ideas?

Same writer, has an idea for a part of the novel, something a character in the novel does. The writer is savvy enough to see that this idea has come from a fellow writer’s work. So, publicly, our writer asks this other writer to be able to use the idea. Ok says the kind writer, giving permission for the idea to travel. Our writer completes the novel and the borrowing is there, improved upon, made more wonderful than it was when it was someone else’s idea. The ‘originator’ is not credited. Is there something wrong here? Does permission mean that the borrowing is ok? Our writer’s readers will now think the ideas in the novel belong to that writer whose name is on the book. Is this ok? Is taking someone else’s ideas and using them made legitimate by the politeness of asking permission?

If the answer to that last question is ‘yes’ then is plagiarism merely reduced to bad manners?

Just something to think about.

(I am not here talking about adding one’s name to the actual work of another writer, taking another’s actual poem or actual story and calling it one’s own and telling others that it is yours. I think the wrong that is there is easy to spot.)


(PS I am adding this link below having just listened to a fun TED talk about Inspiration and genius. Here's a link to  it if you are interested. Although some of the examples of voices in the air and poems hurtling by driven on the wind are a bit fanciful, the notion that inspiration involves something outside of oneself interacting within oneself is an apt one for my discussion above. It also takes all praise or blame for the above sorts of inspired borrowing away from the artist. Oh, and I have made it a link you can just click on, cos that's easier for me to do now.)

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html



Friday 16 November 2012

Flash Bang Wallop! (but quieter)

As people who come here will know, I am not always a fan of flash fiction. Reading a piece on its own and if its good then I get it. But reading a whole collection and it's just not enough... like eating a whole meal of hors doevres and wanting a proper meal instead. Whenever I think of putting a collection together, I can't help but want them to hang thematically somehow. A couple of years ago I wrote 51 stories in flash that were about my late dad. The unpublished collection is called 'Art in Heaven' and it hangs together because each story presents a piece of my dad and the whole acts as a memorial portrait of him. And I wrote, here on this blog, a collection of 120 or more flashes that created a portrait of a village and held a small village mystery within the threads of the stories.

I must admit that I do have fun writing flash fiction, though as often as not for me a flash is a brainstorming exercise and my better ones yearn to wear bigger pants and walk taller. I have turned many flash fiction pieces into full stories even turned one flash fiction into a full length novel. Flash, when I do it, is like sketching is for an artist.

I don't think I am alone in thinking flash fiction often falls intellectually and imaginatively short of what it needs to be. The quirky and the anecdotal and the small gag, things that so frequently feed flash fiction, is not enough for me.

For these reasons, I don't often shout about my flash fiction and don't feel completely comfortable when I do. So, whispering here, I am saying that three of my flash fiction pieces have recently done rather well... in competition terms... with a win and a 2nd place and a shortlisting for a nice anthology.

There, said it. Now I don't want to hear any more about this. Ok

Sunday 4 November 2012

ANNOUNCEMENT


NEW SUN RISING: STORIES FOR JAPAN – an anthology

I remember when the call went out asking writers to submit work for an anthology to raise money to help in Japan after the disaster. I remember the shock of the tragedy and the wanting to do something, anything. I remember one call in particular which gave a list of the things still missing from the proposed anthology that they would like to see included. On that list it said they wanted schoolgirls and mythology and in that was the seed of my story ‘Kimika and the Ants’.

It’s been an e-book for a wee while and on 16th November it’s to be a hold-in-your-hands physical paper-and-print book.

I saw a tv programme recently – well a snatched bit of a programme… something about the millions promised by the Japanese government to help rebuild the worst hit areas not having reached the stricken communities and no new buildings yet to replace what had been so dramatically wiped away. There were pictures of the places where the tsunami had struck hardest and they were no less desperate in their appearance today than they had been over 18 months ago.

What this says is that help is still needed… as it is in so many places in the world… so why give here? I have no particular drum to beat with Japan; the family of a close colleague live there and that’s all the bridge that I have. I do not think you have to give here specifically; I give everywhere and I simply urge you to give too – and I expect that you do. But if you are looking for an interesting Christmas present to buy and to give, then this anthology can’t be bad… and you’d be giving twice: once of the book and once of your money which will go to help those still in need in Japan.

I wish you well and wish everyone everywhere well. 



Saturday 27 October 2012

ONE SET OF RULES

Ideas in the world of literature are fair game. Someone said that once, and the copyright laws recognise the inability of regulations to prevent ideas travelling from one imagination to another. That's why lawyers are called in to dispute cases where the copyright law cannot reach. That suggests there's a real difficulty with the concept of ideas belonging - to one person or a company.

Then, when the ideas are released into the world, then you can't legislate for the influence of those ideas. They will travel in all directions and influence all manner of people. It will sometimes look like copying and we've been taught in school that copying is bad. But sometimes it will not look like copying exactly but something else, something more creative. It's a minefield for the creative imagination out there.

That's why I referenced Bob Dylan recently on this blog. He has been charged by voices in the media with several counts of plagiarism and he has defended himself saying that it makes no sense for his critics to be arguing in that way because all writers borrow from what is there and in their borrowing they then make the material theirs. I sort of go along with that in writing; not the simple reproduction of another's words and sentences and passing them off as one's own, but the using of another's ideas to create something that is different and your own. That, it seems to me, is at the very essence of what being creative is. There's been this shift in art and literature in the past hundred years or so to an impossible notion, that an 'artist' must be completely original, when at the root of every book and artwork, at the very heart, lies someone else's idea. And now we struggle whenever the root of a particular book or artwork is uncovered, whenever the creative process (still not fully understood) is laid bare.

There I go defending Dylan again. But then I read that there are reports that Dylan took umbridge at another songwriter having borrowed from his lyrics. The claim is that Darius Rucker of 'Hootie and the Blowfish' used some of Dylan's songlyrics on their hit 'Only Wanna Be With You' and that Dylan apparently settled out of court with the band. These are just reports, as far as I can tell, but if true they rather undermine Dylan's stance re the plagiarism claims made against him. There should only be one set of rules and those rules for everyone... allowing for differences between the culture of strict crediting of sources in academic writing and the non-referencing of ideas and sources in 'art' and 'literature'.

I was in a writing group for a while and once we were asked if there were ideas we had, pieces we had written that we felt weren't working and that we'd be prepared to let someone else have a go at. Very few of the group participated and there was a feeling that their ideas were somehow precious (because scarce?). I couldn't make sense of the fear these group members had. I gave something I had written to another writer. She then produced a neat story out of it and then began the talk of how she would thereafter enter the piece into competitions. She thought I would have a claim on the piece. She had not used any of the words of my story, but she had used some of the ideas. I told her that I had no claim on any part of what she had written. It was her story and not mine. All the words were hers (in that she had arranged them in the order they had) and she had made the ideas hers with what she had done with them. She thought I was being very generous; I thought it was logical and nothing to do with any generosity in me. That's how ideas work and how they travel. Was I jealous that she had made a cracking piece out of something of mine? Not a bit, because I genuinely had let go of the ideas when I had given them over for her use. I think that's how ideas in art and literature operate naturally and at all sorts of levels.

When writers have to acknowledge that all of their ideas have a root in something else, it seems to me crazy that they get so protective (and dare I say it, dog-in-the-manger) about their ideas. Copyright was put in place to give 'originators' of 'original' work the chance to make some profit from their efforts; it was not put in place to restrict the movement of ideas. Indeed, when the copyright laws were being drawn up, it was recognised that to restrict the movement of ideas was a negative thing. I think, philosophically, that makes sense.


Friday 19 October 2012

I DON'T DO POLITICS, BUT...

Just saw on the BBC something of SNP's kick-off Party Political Broadcast for the move towards the big vote to separate Scotland from England. There was very little content beyond big Al announcing that we will all be thinking about the implications over the next few years (shouldn't it be a couple of years rather than a few?). The bigger part of the broadcast was a musical number... a classical rendition of 'Let's Work Together' with lots of advert-style shots of people smiling and playing and getting on.

Is it just me, or is this choice of song a little bit of an own goal by the SNP... 'United we stand, divided we fall... let's work together'! Divided from England we fall? Don't think that was what they were intending. Is this the level of things we can look forward to under a an SNP led drive towards nationalism? A bit botched I think. But it made me laugh...


Wednesday 17 October 2012

THE ONLY CERTAINTY


THE CERTAINTY OF DOUBT

I recall as a teenager being a little envious of those of my peers who were churchgoers and who believed beyond all doubt. They seemed fixed and certain and on such certainties was built their whole lives and their own complete happiness (it seemed complete to me). My life is built on ‘less stable’ foundations. I could not believe then, riddled as I was with doubt; I still can’t – and now I wonder at the whole idea of certainty in anything.

Someone tells me something is wrong and I wonder by whose decree it is wrong and wonder then at the whole notion of right and wrong and think of determinism in its strict philosophical sense and in the impossibility of escaping it. How can anything be wrong in an absolute sense if determinism is right?

Then a scientist tells me that plagiarism is wrong, and the certainty of her belief is, I think, something unscientific! She says it is morally wrong and in every way wrong. She does not enter into debate on the subject but pronounces from on high, the high of the moral highground. And I am surprised at a scientist’s unwillingness to remain open… open to the possibility of something wrong in her own thinking.

Neuroscience is something new, a study that is in its infancy with many ‘charlatan’ minds professing to have discovered some wonder in the working of the brain, and with some genuinely clever souls discovering the same or a little different but discovering nevertheless. The truth is, (and there’s a sort of certainty in that perhaps) that we do not yet fully understand how the brain works, how consciousness works, how thinking works and how imagining works. We are only just beginning on that journey of discovery. But already there is enough for us to understand that the certainties we hold may not be so certain as we once thought.

There was a time when the educated people believed the world to be flat. Their conviction was unshakeable. It took journeys of discovery to prove otherwise and a whole revolution in thinking. And what have we learned from this? Some of us laugh at the idea that anyone could ever have believed the world flat; some of us don’t laugh. But, at the risk of repeating myself, what is there here to learn? To doubt; to keep an open mind; to always question; to always be trying to understand; to never be so certain that you throw stones based on that certainty. Isn’t that part of what we think of as the scientific mind, a willingness to remain open to all possibilities?

There are many raised voices that cry out that plagiarism is wrong. Some educated voices; some not so educated. The cry out even in the face of evidence that it is a natural part of art, the imitative element in creativity, the process by which many of our revered writers, painters and thinkers have grown. I am not saying with any certainty that plagiarism is right; but I am at least questioning what it is and why it is that it has been so much a natural part of the cultural development of our species. Who is there who never knew a book and wanted to write? If there is sense in not having, each one of us, to reinvent the wheel, then where is the sense in condemning the borrowing of creative ideas in art? I only ask the questions, from a habit of doubting and a stubborn desire for certainty. 



Sunday 30 September 2012

"WUSSIES AND PUSSIES"

There's been a bit of a furore recently involving Bob Dylan and plagiarism. It is claimed that he 'misappropriated' lines from other sources in some of his songs and did not credit his sources. Dylan's response is to call his critics 'wussies and pussies' and to say that all he did was simply part of the tradition of song-writing.

These charges against Dylan have affected some of his fans who have turned their backs against the star whispering 'for shame'. Others remain doggedly loyal and dismiss the attacks on Dylan as just so much rubbish. I think neither response shows any real sense. These charges have to be aired and discussed and debated. For me, they are at the centre of a much bigger debate about art and creativity and the process.

I am reading a book just now by Caroline Alexander called 'The Way To Xanadu'. I am reading it because I am fascinated with where Samuel T. Coleridge got his 'stuff' from. Coleridge was an avid and intense reader, literally devouring everything he could get his hands on, particularly relishing accounts of foreign travel. This is important, for without his readings he could not and would not have created two of the greatest poems in English literature: 'Xanadu' and 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. Everything he read fed into his creative subconscious and then spilled out into his work. He is a perfect example of how we do not create in a vacuum, that creativity relies on being nourished by what we experience and read and see - everything. That being so, how can we talk of plagiarism of ideas? It doesn't make sense. Taking ideas consciously or unconsciously is what art does - making something new out of what is taken. This cannot be stopped, nor should it be, not if we value art in all its many clothes.

But taking whole lines and recycling them wholesale is a little different and the debate goes in a different direction then. For some of you it does. But reading an essay by Malcolm Gladwell on the subject of plagiarism suggests that even here to talk of 'theft' doesn't really make sense. Then somewhere else I read this:

"Musical appropriation - using familiar cultural references or language in a new context - is different from non-fiction writing or journalism, said Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University professor of American history who has written extensively about Dylan.
"Of course it's legitimate," Wilentz said of Dylan's use of others' material. "Dylan's frame of reference is so much larger than most songwriters' - more literary, historical and philosophical."
Wilentz said crediting bits and pieces of another's work is scholarly tradition, not an artistic tradition.
"Creating art is different, and always has been, especially the kind Dylan creates," he said.'

(Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/wussies-and-pussies-dylan-hits-out-at-plagiarism-accusers-20120913-25txt.html#ixzz27xmvKjvp)

That's something I have said here on this blog, not so succinctly perhaps, but said nevertheless. I was talking about writing, but the message of Wilentz is just as apt.

At the very least, having intellectuals divided on the matter illustrates the need for further debate. I have always been prepared to be shown to be wrong in my views on the subject. I have always invited others to argue a different view here on this blog. No-one to date has taken up this challenge. Could that be because those who think of plagiarism as a bad thing are responding emotionally rather than intellectually? 

I also read somewhere else that someone thinks of plagiarism as PLAY-giarism and that then gives that person the licencse to 'play' with others' stuff without any idea that what they are doing is wrong. Whatever you think of that, it does perhaps speak to a shift in the word that warrants examination. And all those critics with their words, sharp as stones and thrown at Dylan, would do well to take a more human and humanist approach: people are not made bad people by creative borrowings. That's how our greatest and most revered artists have worked. It is how creativity itself works. What makes these artists bad is that a vocal minority who may or may not have examined the issue and may or may not fully understand how the creative mind operates, call the artists bad. Dylan is not bad. Even if you come to the conclusion that you don't like his borrowing, even if you come to the conclusion that that is wrong, that does not make him bad. At most all you can conclude is that the act is bad.

And who is there among us who has not been bad at some time or another? And who among those who consider themselves artists or writers or makers of things, has not borrowed at some time or another? (And you would be lieing if you said that you are one who is original and whose work owes not a debt to everything you have ever read, seen, done, experienced.)

Friday 21 September 2012

PEACE ONE DAY

Today is a day of Global Truce and a day of peace... all over the world. There is a movement called PEACE ONE DAY and what has been achieved is simply amazing. Go check out their website. 'And what did you do for peace, daddy?' the child asks, and I say I did this:



PEACE ONE DAY


Surgeons at Camp Bastien weren’t sure. They could put a man back together after a roadside bomb had ripped a leg or an arm. Keeping their heads under fire, keeping a steady hand. But this was different. ‘Breathe,’ said the doc - he thought that was the right thing to do.





('What did you do for peace today?')