Plagiarism! Is there any such thing?

In my opinion, nothing much is original.

Consider fashion for a minute. Clothes designers work with a limited palette. The colours of the rainbow remain. BUT their creativity is revealed in the exciting combination of colours they use. With my experience of snorkeling I am convinced that they have also experienced the wonders of underwater magic and 'steal' their fabulous colour combinations from fantastic fish and seaweed. 

The mini skirt....the maxi skirt.... the figure hugging shape or the loose kimono style?.

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Everything has been DONE before. Just when we are on the edge of boredom a designer RECONFIGURES what has been with us forever and delights us with something 'NEW". Often there is a shock element. How we love to gasp with surprise.

Most women have a 'little black dress or pair of trousers' in her wardrobe. A 'go to' garment when she is desperate. It is the scarf, the beads, the red shoes that can turn heads!

I  loved the cheek of the fashion world when someone came up with the idea of

"Orange....the NEW BLACK." It blossomed for a short season!

It is the same in the WORLD OF INVENTIONS.

Things invented are often attributed to one person. For example the telephone is 'known' to be invented by Alexander William Bell. He actually 'plagiarised' the many inventors who worked on this amazing invention before him.

Thomas Edison also gets the credit for the light bulb, but any intelligent person knows, and accepts, that many many people got him to the point where he could perfect their work.

We don't scream PLAGIARISM!

Exactly the same principle is involved in the WRITTEN WORD!

A INFINTESIMAL percentage of what you or I write is entirely original.

What we do is assimilate information into the giant garbage bins in our bodies called our brains. They are constantly taking in information through our 5 senses, day and night. Even our dreams are made up of gathered suggestions. Not much originality even there! The brain is constantly sorting the junk from what we consider is valuable.

The gift of course is being able as a writer, to sift through the stuff presented and RE CREATE, with a modicum of  independent thought, an interesting and perhaps even an exciting piece of work. We KNOW that copying information and trying to pass it off as one's own is NOT ON! We have to absorb, think carefully and reconfigure whatever information we read and hear.

Turn of phrase often delights one. Style is very important and presentation of ideas makes or breaks. And of course there is grammar........the nuts and bolts of writing. I remember clearly my first English assignment presented at University. I got a reasonable mark but it was the Prof's dry, FIND YOURSELF A GOOD GRAMMAR BOOK AND APPLY IT, that got my attention! I cringed then but did as he advised. I find I'm still learning, many years later.  

In conclusion I will say that the bulk of all human utterances, oral and written, is plagiarised.

From famous speeches, saved by an outstanding original idea or two that we are still quoting many years later, think Winston Churchill who said in 1940 on the brink of World War 2, "all I have to offer you is blood, toil, tears and sweat." to famous writers, think William Shakespeare.... "To be or not to be, that is the question?" 

Can you imagine them as youngsters and their exasperated mothers trying to put them to bed? "Will you just put that pen DOWN and get under your blanket. I'm warning you, the candle/light is going out, NOW"

I was stupified when I once read my daughter's poem, written when she was 13, in a school magazine under another child's name. That is stealing and we are all aware of the respect we owe to people's work that we quote. 

But read and read, listen and REWORK all these ideas that are coming at you from billboards to the bible and MAKE THEM YOUR OWN and then you can call yourself an 'original thinker' and an author worth reading.