Do any of you fear that you are being influenced by something you might have read or heard someplace else? I'm always worrying about this.
I'm not afraid of being influenced by others. Otherwise, I'd still be howling for a diaper change and trying to learn how to walk for the first time.
Nope, never. In fact, every book I read, every song I listen to, every piece of artwork I've ever studied, has absolutely no effect on me whatsoever.
I don't think being influenced is so bad. It's not bad necessarily, to be influenced by someone's work, so it's really nothing to be worrying about. But I think what the truly great writers, artist, and so on do is take that influence and make it something unique. So I think at first people are always going to be producing things that have been influenced, but they usually always progress onto something of there own. If any of that makes sense.
lol I don't worry about being influenced, but I do hold a sort of weird irrational neurosis about accidentally plagiarising someone. as a result I spend a lot more time than I probably should checking and re-reading my work.
There are only so many musical notes. And statistically, at some point, every possible combination will have been written. And so it is with the human written word. And it already stands to reason that certain short phrases will be copied and re-written without thought to their origin. Phrases like, "when it is all said and done" are already substantially incorporated in everyday speech. Or compositions like "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself", are a matter of our fabric and mental record. One can't be blamed for writing what it is in their own mind, no matter who put it there. But that doesn't excuse long compositions written "word for word" (another familiar phrase) that are written by another and is a matter of copyright infringement. You can not accidently plagiarize anothers work, in my opinion. Such things require a conscious effort. Repeating anothers words in short, however, is not unknown and perfectly acceptable, and implies no criminal intent to deprive another of their work, (or claim credit for anothers work).
Either you're joking (most likely), or you're bullshitting us, or you're bullshitting yourself. We all receive stimuli from our environment (including books, songs, and art), and we all respond to those stimuli we consider important. There may be an odd catatonic exception, but you're not one. And since I've read a few of your postings by now and found them quite intelligent in most cases, Redyelruc, I don't believe you find books, art and songs unimportant.
I suppose that rests firstly on one's definition of plagiarism, and secondly on ones definition of oxymoron To my knowledge, an oxymoron is only apparently contradictory, but not contradictory in fact. Such "cruel to be kind" Actually, there have been known cases of accidental plagiarism. A women with a photographic memory had a book pulled of the shelves for it. I suppose you could question her honesty, and say she did it on purpose, but it's not impossible. But like I said, its an irrational neurosis of mine, not a sensible one. I try to ignore it as much as possible
