So Che Guevara’s face isn’t cutting up quite like I’d want him to.
I have two thoughts, possibly connected, most likely not.
If one makes art by drawing what one sees and writing what one knows then art, by definition, is plagiarism. And yes, I know it’s all how you use it, how you arrange it and whathaveyou, but if you’re close to such a person how exactly do you feel knowing you have been ripped off. Used. How far do we take relationships to manipulate the perfect scene.
I had the vaguest notion of a silent girl who viciously attacked literature as she came but I never wrote it down and I’ve lost my point. Other than Romeo never loved Juliet.
Three thoughts, I have.
The world is everlasting. We are not. If you have five years left do you rush to do everything at once, ration yourself to survive or burn out fast. Die now. Beat the system.
Somebody left a comment I am not going to approve. Guess what spambot, I know what baise means. I ain’t gonna link to French porn, unless it’s pretentious. Silly.
I will link to webcomics I have recently read instead.
Anders Loves Maria made me late for a class. And if I were pregnant how could I not love a man who sings Bowie at my belly?
I have been reading Gunnerkrigg Court but it’s hit and miss. I like some of the ideas but I think I’m reading it for the sake of reading it.
And you should just plain be reading Nedroid comics.
Che Guevara, eh?
I was likened to him one day in work as I swept down the aisle with my black work shirt undone, a black undershirt revealed, and fluttering free in a veritable ‘fuck-you’ to the new rule that demands shirts to be buttoned and tucked in. And my long curly hair framed a face set with the miserable resolve of a guy with no time to smile at old people.
That said, I have also been likened to a miserable and smelly wee bugger with hair like a burst mattress.
As for copying and plagiarism, I wrote a few things to that effect as inspired by the Lit Tech class and the idea for a book in the style of 1984 and Brave New World, also with plagiarism and the trodding of the same ideas over and over again as the underlying theme.
And why am I telling you all this? Because we’re the narcissist generation. Fucking hooray for that. Good luck cutting up Che Guevara, you little pint-sized plagiariser, you.
I like to think of plagiarism from a sound perspective. As in you can’t create any new notes, but you can string them together in a different way to what you’ve heard. A couple of notes together might sound similar to something else but it is truly new. It’s really the same in writing if you have the sort of bizarre homebrew logic that I have.
I like music.
I met a guy who told me he and his bandmate sat up all night and wrote what they thought was an utterly fantastic song. They played it the next day and realised they had unconsciously written Californication.
But really my point is how far can you take plagiarism. I steal lines, phrases and scenarios from just about everybody and I feel weird sometimes when it’s people I’m close to. Like I’m ripping them off, which is fine so long as they’re not writers themselves. Circle of plagiarism.
Californication is an utterly fantastic song.
I’ve been thinking the same things myself. It came to me when I sat down with my novel determined to change it from fanfiction, only to discover that practically every image and metaphor I’ve used isn’t mine, they belong to the two people I’ve written about. I was worried about this but then I realised that I wrote it better than either of those (real) people could write them. But enough about me.
Plagiarism is unavoidable. We write what we know because if we write what we don’t know then we can’t write. There have been dozens, maybe hundreds, of times where I’ve changed what I wanted to say, changed when I was going to say it, how to say it, to smile or to frown or to cry, just to get that perfect scene. I can only hope that those concerned will read me some day and recognise themselves in my writing (and, at the same moment, a hundred strangers to recognise themselves, to stop and wonder if they’ve ever known me, to sit and cry at how banal and ununique their lives are).
With plagiarism we write truth, and if we write truth then we are great, so fuck those we rip off because they’ve never done anything as great with their lives as we will.
Want originality? Start with the sources. Sci-Fi writers go to the pioneers of the genre. Those going for evocative language should immerse themselves in Renaissance, biblical texts, old forgotten cultures, the poetry and arts of each era as it swung by with its flowing discourse, at once beautiful and at once prophetic. You’ll learn more from your own imagination than any anime or commercialised film and it is reading and witnessing such works that allow the dam to burst.
Look at anything that’s written or made. They go to the history of the world and lift from them an interpretation, no matter how obscure, and create what they will. And you can cross genres. The story of Paradise Lost placed into futuristic dystopia terms, the horrors of a second world war twisted into the fantasy setting of Tolkien, a nuclear holocaust in clean, springy, 60’s America (God, I love Fallout 3).
But remember this. While any writer will be able to take the ingredients that others have used and bake a cake, the truly special ones will always add something unique to that mix. They’ll see the potential in something that no-one else has seen and put it to good use. Don’t reassure yourself with ‘it’s okay ’cause everyone else is doing it’. Look for something special and keep it to yourself, patiently hoarding it away until the time comes that you’re confident that you won’t waste it, that you have the skill and the ingredients. Christ, maybe even make sure you’re well known first before unleashing the masterpiece bubbling away in the pot. Then, when you’re ready, let it loose. Remember when you’ve ever said ‘God, how did they come up with that one?’ Take pride. Because if done correctly, people will be saying that about your works too.
Or they might say ‘Fuck is this supposed to be?’ Shit happens. No refunds.