Writing the Self

plagiarism as soul theft

“Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that is wrong. They know less, that’s why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.”
Margaret Atwood (b. 1939), Canadian novelist, poet, critic. Dancing Girls, “Lives of the Poets,” (1977).

As with almost everything Atwood has ever said, this seems a home truth to me. I would add that, for me, writing is a means of uncovering what’s inside my OWN head. Once I can see more of that clearly, I figure, I’ll worry about what other people think.

Writing is an effective way to discover what we think. But it goes deeper than that for me. Writing uncovers even my feelings and then makes them sharper, clearer and easier to keep as part of my history. I don’t worry that language will limit or misshape my truth because words are my friends; I have been in love with syntax since I learned the word. In this way, what I write is my own map to the universe inside my head and heart.

That intimate relationship with writing, my own and that of some others, including Atwood, whose poetry has influenced mine more than anyone else’s, means that plagiarism is a filthy act in my code of conduct. When I found that my writing had been stolen on another blog, I was nauseated even as I acknowledged to myself…