Friday, February 10, 2012

when is it copying and when is it being inspired?

Just a super quick post as I put off going to bed.  (for some strange reason the word "super" has begun to creep back into my vocabulary...)

I am a writer.  But I am also a reader.  I probably read more than I write.  I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing, and that isn't the point of this post anyway.  Sometimes when I am reading I see or notice something that I am just like "holy shit, that is amazing!"  and then I wait to beats and say "I wish that I had thought of it first."  A specific example would include the daemons from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (The Golden Compass).  Because there are some ideas that done once are genius, but done even one more time by someone else makes you look like what you are.  A copier.  The book that brought this up is one that I haven't actually read, though I ordered it today.  House of Leaves by some dude that I can't remember right now.  I was flipping through the book and just the layout is incredibly...messed up.  One story in the main text, a second story happening in the footnotes, then pages where the text goes vertical or around the edge, or just a single word in the middle of the page, or footnotes, but no text, or...you get the picture.  And just looking at it makes me want to do something like that, but I feel like I can't because this guy got there first.  Does that make any sense?  Or am I being too sensitive about it?

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