The art of 'stealing'

I know that anyone who tries to write faces all sorts of time-related obstacles.  I guess I'm no different, but I've not really had the chance to write as much as I wanted to recently.  I have continued to write, though, and I'm satisfied I haven't stopped.

I'm happy with what I've written in the past couple days.  I had a general idea of what I needed to accomplish in a couple scenes, but wasn't sure how to do it.  I was fortunate today, though, and the writing came easily enough.  The scenes didn't end how I expected them to, but it feels good when a scene I write turns out differently.  I take it to mean that rather than forcing a pre-conceived plot idea to fit, I am discovering how my characters really would act.

I have finished reading Before I Go to Sleep, and have now decided it might be helpful for me to go back through a book I have read before, Replay by Ken Grimwood.  It is about a man who has a heart attack, and after that moment keeps going back and replaying parts of his life.  Although most of the book is irrelevant to mine, there are certain key points that I hope might inspire me, even apart from the what-the-hell-is-happening-to-me element.  There were a couple similarities in how we approached it, so that was encouraging.  After I finish this post I'm going to go back to Replay and see if there is something in there I can 'steal'.

I take back some of what I have said about the Fifty Shades series.  The very idea of fanfiction that underwent name changes so it could be sold as it's own work pissed me off at first.  It still kind of does, and I still hold that it is ten times easier to write a book when you are masking characters from other works as new ones.  I have done this myself (and I'm glad I did, because it was a good exercise and stepping stone), but I would never dream of trying to get any of it published because it still feels like cheating.  However, yes, everything we write comes from something, whether life or another book.  The creativity comes when you decide how to use the things you steal, because it can not exist in a vacuum.  People do 'steal,' but in different degrees.  E.L. James happened to 'steal' much more from one source.  I still frown upon it, but it still does take some degree of creativity to turn Twilight into Fifty Shades of Grey.  I guess the work fits into a grey area (pun partially intended).

What I think of the quality of James' creativity is unrelated, so I won't go into that here.

In the spirit of 'stealing,' here is a Ted Talk I have read on the matter by Austin Kleon, who wrote Steal like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You about Being Creative.  Check it out. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oww7oB9rjgw


Total Word Count: 11638 (13% of my goal)