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