For a small employer with around sixty-five people on staff, my organization employs an unusually large number of writers, some of us with books ready to be published, and a couple more who write only as a hobby. We have a novelist (that’s me), a memoirist, an essayist, and a poet, and at least one more whose spouse is writing a book. We’re all over that place.
I was working with a group of coworkers in a conference room, reorganizing a kit for a staff activity we’d done. “Oh,” said one of these writers, pulling a long hair out of the plastic pouch she’d just picked up. “Bonus genetic material.”
I laughed. “I’m totally stealing that,” I told her.
She nodded and smiled. She understands. She’s a writer, too.
The truth of the matter is, it may seem as if us writers are just living our lives, but what we are really doing is collecting. Everything around us is fodder for a story, a character, a setting. So if you’ve had a fight with your kid’s teacher, or your ex-wife is a real piece of work, or a friend is having a hard time, if you tell a writer, it may end up in a story. While talking with your writer friend (everyone has one, right?), if you raise one eyebrow, or absent-mindedly run your hand through your hair, have a slight lisp or an obviously fake laugh, one of their characters might be similarly rewarded. And, if you’ve said something I’ve found particularly clever, chances are good I’ll steal it and use it later.
The exceptions, of course, are found in media. Using a song lyric without a license, or your favorite piece of dialogue from a movie or television show, is copyright infringement, and we all know from high school that using something from a book without citing it is plagiarism. I think I speak for most writers when I say I’d like to be remembered for my own work, not for stealing someone else’s.
All this is not without difficulty. Every time I write a description I think is especially powerful, or a line of dialogue that is uncommonly snappy, I question whether it is mine, or if it originated somewhere else. If it’s not mine, was it drawn from my own experience or did it originate from a movie? This is especially true of dialogue, since for most of my life most of the clever things I say are drawn from movies, and not creations of my own quick wit.
These days, between working a full-time day job and spending my evenings writing, editing or talking with readers, I don’t have much time to watch movies (as much as I love them), much less steal from them. Despite that, the fear and self-doubt are always there. The voice that says I’m not that good is not easily silenced.
Nevertheless, I persist, as most writers do. I hope you persist, too, at whatever makes you happy. Even if you’ve stolen your catchphrase from a movie.
Vickie Jarman 