NOT VERY NICE REALLY

In a blog a person can seem to be what they are not. A sweet smiling picture, some carefully penned words, and voila, we have a good woman before us. Throw in some charity work (or just the mention of a few charity donations) and a few testimonials from friends and you couldn’t hope to meet a nicer person. For good measure add in an account of personal trial and suffering, and garner a handful of sympathetic messages from well-meaning well-wishers and the character is whiter than white.

People rarely read between the lines. Rarely see the invention, believing what they read, taking what they are presented with at face value. But the character of a person is much more complex than that. Add to this the fact that a person rarely writes so publicly about the bad that is in themselves, and, yes, a nice person. Must be.

Then they trip up and something they have done reveals them and there’s no hiding after that… not on the blogosphere.

I was inspired three years ago by a story someone else wrote. Her ideas got into my head and combined with other ideas from science and psychology and life (my life, too), and out-spilled a story of my own. The relationship between the original story that was the source of my inspiration and what I had written was obvious; I did not try to hide it. I was subsequently accused of plagiarism and a campaign that was vehement in its assassination of my good character ensued.

I apologized to the offended writer. I removed the piece from public view. But what I did not (and could not do) was admit that I had done wrong. Precedents for this kind of ‘borrowing’ stretch back to Shakespeare and beyond. In a recent book by neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer he talks about how creativity works and he draws attention to this aspect of creativity, the borrowing of ideas and the recombining of different ideas in new ways. Lehrer’s argument is sensible and his thoughts carry the substance of what I had already argued for in defense of what I had done.

Then I paid for a legal point of view of my borrowing and was encouraged when, despite the relationship between my piece and the source being obvious, it was seen as the within the normal sphere of influence and not an example of plagiarism.

So why am I writing again? ‘Methinks he doth protest too much!’

I had a story accepted for an online publication and it was duly posted. Then one day it just disappeared. I did not discover this disappearance until a long time afterwards and only by chance. I contacted the people concerned and was told they had received a letter from someone complaining about my work being available on their site. You see, the above offended writer had written to them to complain and had further assassinated my character. Because this was done in such a 'backdoor' way there was no chance for me to defend myself... except this time I contacted the people concerned. After some discussion and explanation the situation was rectified. But this is not the first time that this seemingly nice person (nice on her blog) has done this – written e-mails to places where my work is to appear to undermine my success. She has not made any public statement on the matter on her blog. Go figure! But three years after the event she still sees it as her mission to destroy my reputation as a writer and as a person and to do so in such an underhand and sneaky way - like the poison pen letters schoolgirls disseminate in class. And she still appears as this ‘nice person’ on her blog.

Surely it is time to draw a line under all of this? I stand by my apology to her. I have not used the 'offending' piece again elsewhere – which I could quite easily have done. I have not garnered any further accusations of ‘too much borrowing’ since. There is only one thing more I can do – and that would be to admit I had done wrong… and that I cannot do… and it seems that neuroscience and psychology and common sense all support me in saying creativity works precisely by borrowing and through the reconfiguring and recycling of ideas. So I say again, surely it is time to draw a line under this incident and to move on.

I do not name the offended writer here. She knows who she is. If she wants to make this all public, her hurt and her unflagging and sometimes anonymous campaign against me, then she can with my approval… but I don’t think she will because that would be to undermine her good name. If she wants to discuss the matter privately with me through e-mail she can… but she never has. But what I would say is that the underhand and almost sneaky way she has chosen to deal with her hurt does her no credit at all.