Using Anonymous Work

There is a famous recent story about some adages and words of wisdom which have been circulating anonymously for over thirty years. Even Mother Theresa used some of them as slogans in her mission in India. It turns out that they all come from an unpublished book written in 1968 by a college freshman at either Harvard or Yale. He circulated a few photocopies to his friends and it entered the "oral tradition" in that way. Fortunately for him, he took the precaution of registering the copyright at the time. Since then, he led a very conventional life in business or engineering, something like that, only to discover much to his astonishment that this book he had nearly forgotten had taken on near mythic status. It was recently formally published in book form under his name.

Sadly, I forget his name or the book, but you could probably find it.

So these things can happen. Maybe this poem was something circulated on the internet. On the other hand, the author who used it should have acknowledged that it was not his writing.

If you use a poem or a piece of prose that is someone elses - even if the author is unknown - in your own work and don't acknowledge the fact, then I feel that's dishonest, more to yourself than anybody else.

However, none of us invented the English language, and for my money writers should be like sponges, picking up words and phrases here, there and everywhere that they can use in their own writing. And I see nothing wrong in this.

If you tell a joke and commence by saying, "Here, I've got one for you ....." nobody's going to accuse you of plagiarism, even though it's blatantly obvious you didn't come up with the joke all on your own.

Likewise, if you happen to be good at writing business letters, there's a good chance you're using a number of stock phrases that you've picked up from time to time, either in board meetings, letters written to yourself or in your masters degree.

If I hear a good phrase, or a novel way of describing something using a word I haven't initially thought of, then I tuck it away somewhere in the back of mind in the hope that I may find a use for it in my writing.

Example, although not a very good one, that I heard on the telly the other day. A guy in his fifties who'd had an affair with a much younger girl used the phrase, "At my age I need to deal in certainties," when explaining the break-up to her. I liked that, and made a mental note of it. One day, when turning down a risky opportunity, I may use that very phrase to explain that I'm a family man and am now too cowardly to take risks that several years ago I may have jumped at. That's a bad example, but I'm sure you take my point.

For some of my writing I do a fair amount of research, but I phrase things differently and add my own "Wigginsisms". I'm a great fan of the thesaurus, and when writing seriously like to surround myself with half a dozen. The guys who were writing in the Middle Ages had none of these luxuries, and for my money were true masters because whatever they wrote came write out of their heads - even if it can sometimes be hard to read by modern day standards.

(And that's twice I've used the phrase "For my money" here, which apart from being bad writing could be classed as a form of plagiarism, because I certainly don't know where the phrase originated and up to this point haven't admitted that I didn't personally originate it myself).

In a nuthell (another phrase I use but didn't originate) anything more than a short phrase is cheating, but as writers we owe it to ourselves and our audience to pick up words and phrases wherever we go. It may sometimes make us feel like a fraud, but if the essence of what we write is ours, there's nothing wrong in circulating a good phrase or even description if it enhances our writing.

P.S. However, there must be hundreds of phrases or ideas or descriptions that I've originated in my own writing, but how would I feel if I discovered someone else had "stolen" one of these?

Cheated probably. You can say I should feel flattered, but I think I'd feel cheated.

I've been thinking about this overnight, and it seems to me that there's a thin line between when a phrase turns from origin to plagiarism to common useage.

Take the phrase "On a wing and a prayer" for instance. We've all heard it and many of us have used it, perhaps even in our writing. It means, as we all know, hopefully having a go at something that we're unlikely to succeed in.

But where did it originate?

Well apparently, during World War One airplanes were still a novelty and untested, at least in war. A "wing and a prayer" was first uttered when an American flyer came in with a badly damaged wing. His fellow pilots and mechanics were amazed he didn't crash. He replied he was praying all the way in. Another pilot chimed in that "a wing and a prayer brought you back."

So the phrase was born.

Now here's the question. When the next person used that phrase, was he committing plagiarism? Maybe, but it's still only a phrase, and this is how our language grows. Certainly nobody's committing plagiarism by using it today.

So the next question is that if you or I hear a phrase for the first time, are we cheating if we use it in our writing? I don't believe so.

I do believe, however, that if we copy a poem or a couple of paragraphs into our writing - even if the author's unknown - and claim them as our own, then we're a fraud and are cheating ourselves as well as our readers.

(Sorry if I appear to be monopolosing this thread. That wasn't my intention. I'd be interested to hear what the editors have to say on this subject).

Well, for once, I agree with Barthes on this. Writers don't so much 'create' language, as arrange it, and most of our phrases are surely lifted from things we've read, otherwise we'd be straining at every description that wasn't instruction manual stuff, and battling hard for realistic dialogue. Think of phrases like "furrowed brow," "mind's eye," "dead of the night," "raised eyebrow," "arched foot" - they aren't all metaphors, but they're phrases we borrow.

Interestingly enough, Karl, I was reading your piece 'The Booze Taxi' the other day, and wondered how many of the delightful phrases in that were previously noted down from conversations - "aeroplane blonde," "given birth to a dead otter," "bopping your baloney", "juicing the clam," "badly-packed kebab" etc.

Also interestingly enough, the piece I'm working on at the moment came about after I gutted a piece of badly-written erotica and decided to frankenstein it together as a battle in 17th century Japan.

all very valid, but this was an entire two page poem, not a phrase...and not rearranged either!
so the original point still stands... as karl and justyn say, the very least this writer couldve done is acknowledged that it wasnt his work.

gawd, i sound like 'Outraged of Heckington' now..

I use words and phrases I pick up from other people. Especially in MSN Chat for instance :)

I did a review of this book for the abc online magazine - I slaughtered it as a piece of appallingly bad writing.

I think if you borrow more than a line, you should source it. Sometimes it is helpful to have a line or image in your work that you intend to be there for a keen-eyed reader, to trigger associations or just the pleasure of wondering where it came from. I do this sometimes, but I usually give a hint that it isn't mine, for example the character will be fairly evidently quoting but not attributing.

All writers borrow, great writers steal. But if you nick a whole poem then it should be attributed. But then, if it is anonymous, how could he do this other than by saying "It was a poem ____ had seen in the hospital, circulating on emails. Nobody knew who'd written it" - and then, you see, it still leaves the possibility that the author had wanted an anonymous poem to make a point and written it himself.

It was a shockingly bad book.

Surely it wouldve sufficed to have said at the end: *poem included within, writer anon*

sorry andrew, i have to correct you here, what you should have said was: ' I think it was a shockingly bad book'

In my opinion, it wasnt. Perhaps it was the Scots dialogue that threw you?

Thats my opinion mind you, not fact.

sorry.

I sound rather pompous there - heaven forfend.

Henstoat,

I'm glad you brought up "The Booze Taxi." I wanted to bring it into the debate myself for those very same reasons, but decided not to because I'd then be accused of self-promotion.

None of those phrases are mine, of course. The piece actually took quite a bit of research, even though it was a lot of fun. I discovered phrases like that by trawling the web for various online slang thesauruses and the like, and then finding ways to write the ones I liked into the story. One of my favourites is when I describe Janice/Sophie as having tits large enough to choke a horse. I loved that line. It made me laugh when I first saw it and I obviously hoped to have that same effect on the reader.

For the most part, the various situations the main character gets into in the piece came out of my own disturbed imagination, but I required different ways of saying the same thing, i.e. Janet Street Portered for drunk (slaughtered), which I believe I found in a Cockney rhyming dictionary.

Writers need tools, and shouldn't be too proud to use them. The skill in writing is to take various situations and adapt them to your own style.

Think of a film.

Have you got one in mind?

Okay, let's see how close I can get to the storyline. There's a hero, right? And he meets a girl, yeah? A girl who in some way sends him out on a journey. He has many adventures. Struggles. Meets a mentor who helps and advises him on the way. He faces a final battle, which he loses ..... almost. But he just finds that extra something within himself to come through and defeat his adversaries.

Oh, and he gets the girl, of course.

Now I could have been way off here, but when you think about it about 50% of the films we've ever watched follow this formula. And it's not considered to be plagiarism. Why? Because the writer uses his skill to tell the same story in a completely different way.

The writer isn't the only profession to use these methods. Architects, designers, artists and any other occupation that requires a degree of creativity search constantly for inspiration and make mental notes whenever they come across something that impresses them.

I've deviated a little from the thread theme here, so to bring it back again, it seems we're all in agreement. Use whatever tools are available to us as writers. But to claim a few paragraphs as our own when we've in actual fact stolen them is pure plagiarism and should be treated with .....

(And believe it or not, I can't think of a last word to finish this contribution. Off to the thesaurus).

No, it wasn't the Scottish dialogue. Try reading the bit where he introduces the female character with two pages of exposition and not a single line of action. Said female character thereafter being nothing but a device to push the plot along, with no life of her own - also not keen on a rape being used as a 'whodunnit' with the unspoken assumption that once mystery is solved it has no impact on her at all. I actually felt it was quite a nasty book, with no redemption for any of the characters involved.

I do normally go along with "I think, but others might think otherwise" but not on Celine Dion, Gwyneth Paltrow or this book.

Back on the issue - I did recently see a poem here which was constructed around a Psychedelic Furs song title with no acknowledgement, being the central refrain in the poem. The rest was original, but the central image was not.

hrmm hope you pointed it out to the contributer?

still dont agree on the book.

agree on dion, have no feelings about paltrow.

In retrospect, Liana is right and I apologise. I do have very strong opinions, but I don't necessarily believe that those are the only valid opinions.

So, to rephrase. In my opinion, this was a very bad book and one I felt quite strongly about. I also got it as a review copy, so spent no money on it and read it on a train, so wasted no time on it, and it still made me angry for about two days.

Which is not to say that someone else might not get something from the book that I didn't.

Anyway, the review is here
http://www.abctales.com/abcplex/viewfeature.cgi?f=226

and I can't do that clever html thing.

Back on the Karl's point: Back in about 1991 my birthday rolled around as usual in October and some people in the office asked "how does it feel getting older." My comment was "growing older is preferable to the alternative."

Now, I sincerely thought I had originated that line. Everyone thought it was a great line. No one said they'd heard it before.

Several years later, I learned that someone, I think Noel Coward or another wag of a similar ilk, had popularized the line decades earlier.

So now when I use the line, I tell people it's not mine. Blast. But it's still a great line.

There's a similar line in the Krays "The options have limited appeal"

The author of this piece is unknown, Liana.

What do you see nurse, what do you see
What do you think when you look at me
A crabby old woman, not very wise
Uncertain of habit with faraway eyes

Who dribbles her food and makes no reply
Who doesn't seem to care and won't even try
Who seems not to notice the things that you do
And is always losing a stocking or shoe

Who resisting or not, lets you do as you will
With bathing and feeding, the long day to fill
Is that what you're thinking, is that what you see
Open your eyes nurse, you're not looking at me

I'll tell you who I am as I sit here so still
As I do at your begging and eat at your will
I'm a small child of ten with a father and mother
Brothers and sisters who love one another

A young girl of sixteen with wings on her feet
Dreaming that soon now a lover she'll meet
A bride soon at twenty, my heart gives a leap
Remembering the vows that I promised to keep

At twenty-five now, I have young of my own
Who need me to guide and secure a happy home
A woman of thirty, my young now grown fast
Bound to each other with ties that should last

At forty my young ones have grown and are gone
My husband is beside me to see I don't mourn
At fifty once more babies play around my knee
We have grandchildren, my loved one and me

Now dark days are upon me, my husband is dead
I look at the future and shudder with dread
My young are all rearing young of their own
I think of the years and the love that I've known

I'm now an old woman and nature is cruel
I don't like old age, it makes me look like a fool
The body crumbles, grace and vigor depart
There is now a stone where I once had a heart

Inside this old carcass a young girl still dwells
Now and again my battered heart swells
I remember the joys and I remember the pain
I'm loving and living life all over again

I think of the years all few and too fast
I have to accept that nothing can last
So open your eyes nurse, open and see
Not a crabby old woman, look closer it's me

yep, thats the one tom... and it really isnt in the style of the author i was talking about (that much im sure andrew will agree with there)

knew id seen it elsewhere....

thanks

Still wonder how the author, within the body of the work, could have acknowledged that it was a found poem - but as Liana says, it wouldn't have killed him to have put it in the front or back of the book. An implication is that he wrote it himself, and I agree with Liana, it isn't in keeping with the rest of the book.

Bit cheeky, indeed.