Thoughts on Writing #21: Magpie Moments.

[seanan_mcguire]

It's time to return to the modern day for the twenty-first essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. Just in case you're new to the party, there will eventually be fifty essays, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. (Past essays are linked from the list of thoughts as they're finished, thus allowing people

Comments

[shadowvalkyrie]

One of the best essays in this series! -- I'm afraid I say that mostly because it's my own main writing problem. My brain does "unintentional plagiarism" to me all the time. I write stuff and realise (luckily, in most cases myself, or I'd be dead of shame by now) that something that just flowed out of my pen keyboard with a ton of other stuff is actually almost verbatim something I've read somewhere else, sometimes years ago. That the brilliant idea I've just had is actually a twist from a movie I saw ages ago. It also happens with character and place names. I would do anything to make it stop, but it just keeps happening.
It's probably a good thing I have no intention of actually publishing anything, because a thousand words of fanfic are more than enough to send me into fits of fretting whether there's stolen idea or prose material somewhere in there. Sending an actual book to a publishing house might be the end of my sanity. *ggg*

And I agree with having 20 bazillion influences. (I sometimes think that the only possible originality is how you mix the tidbits you picked up during your life, but that's a depressing thought, especially if it should refer to everyone - not only me, which I know it does. *g*)

[seanan_mcguire]

Yeah, giving yourself a nervous breakdown = not a good idea. I think that sort of magpie behavior happens to just about everybody; at least you recognize it!