# Writing > General Writing >  Is your writing original?

## blazeofglory

Creative, you think you are. I think not in the slightest. It is rubbish, gibberish and littered, fouled a hotchpotch of ideas, dead ones more often than not. 
All you have is creaftmanship you connived through repetitions. Truth is simple. As simple as your nose, with no spectacles draped. Truth is as simple as planting and harvesting paddy. But you blanket yourself with coats, veneers of ideas shrouding and clouding truth. Your conceits, idealities, images and fancies earth reality. Your linguistic efficiencies with archaic styles crown you with the glory of being a luminary. At the base you are not the least bit better of if a comparison is stricken between your pedantries and a peasants who work on farm in the tropical blistering and sweltering sun. 
We bigheaded men of letters or words are simply supercilious beings, and we try to shade truth so that all can not see it as it is.
I do not think anyone is original in writing. All we do is repeat, or parroting we evolve into leading lights, starring in domains of art, literature and music.
All I do is wordplay. Do not seek substance in what I write, for this is a fusion of imported ideas, in effect play on words. Punning shrewdly I try to seduce you into what I have to say, indeed making it funnier than the ordinary. 
I feel ashamed, in fact embarrassed to speak truth directly; dwelling on imaginary stuff I fabricate ideas fooling people into ill conceived rashes. 
Only nature is original and all those in proximity with nature. We are mimickers only.

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## symphony

Ah the confessions of a poet.




> I do not think anyone is original in writing. All we do is repeat, or parroting we evolve into leading lights, starring in domains of art, literature and music.


Yeah i guess there are never new writers, but well there are new readers. No new points of view are left, but there are new eyes. So we keep struggling and quivering under metaphors and imageries. Blah. 
If we broke the world into its elemental bits and ate them raw, we would be well off. But there you are- new eyes! Cant help dancing in front of them, can we?

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## Umbilical

You're right, I cover my shame. Embellish it so that I want to copulate with it - manifest the same desire that got me there in the first place.

By the way, I enjoyed your 'poetic' expression of that 'truth'.

:P

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## Trilaque

> Ah the confessions of a poet.
> 
> 
> Yeah i guess there are never new writers, but well there are new readers. No new points of view are left, but there are new eyes. So we keep struggling and quivering under metaphors and imageries. Blah. 
> If we broke the world into its elemental bits and ate them raw, we would be well off. But there you are- new eyes! Cant help dancing in front of them, can we?


It isn't the fact that the ideas aren't new, rather, it is the fact that the new _people_ writing the stories add their own twists and turns, love and hate, good and evil. It is that they pour their souls into a writing in order to make their writing something that stands out above others who carried the same idea.

So, sure, no book is really new in the sense of basic plot, but it is to whatever extent the book has been changed from those before that make it unique.

I guess, pretty much, I agree with your statement.

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## AuntShecky

Who is the "you" to which this screed refers? What are the specific works in which the narrator bases his opinion?

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## Chesterfield

I don't think I'm the one who can judge if my work is original or not.  :Wink:  I think that's up to the people who read it. True, there is little originality in any sort of artistic expression in this day and age, but we can't do anything except change that ideal.  :Idea:

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## EugenieIsabelle

I think that no two books or poems or anything else written from the heart are exactly the same, actually. I mean, if you just sit and write your own version of Romeo and Juliet, (which many people seem to do, by the way), then yes, what originality are we talking about? But if someone is pouring himself into the black lines on white paper, then what was written is singular. 

At least, that's what I, being an idealist, think.

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## Charles Darnay

Zarc flac shubuhu damato clacalato funmy voop........etc.


Fairly original and unique, don't you think? I don't think it's ever been written before....of course, it probably wouldn't sell now would it?

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## kasie

> I think everyone has his or her own unique vision of life. The plots may be the same, but the story is different.


After the Battle of Waterloo, Wellington wanted a definitive history of the event written. (Apologies at this point to any French forum members.) He sent a trusted subaltern to interview and collect the memories of as many people who were present that day as he could trace. And, surprise, surprise, they all gave different accounts - even men who were standing shoulder to shoulder on the same part of the battlefield gave differing accounts. Why? Because, I think, they saw things through different eyes: they all brought different experiences to the event, so different things were significant to them. 

Isn't that the point of writing? Our experiences are unique because we filter them through a unique collection of previous experiences (call them prejudices if you like) and in this life, no-one is in possession of absolute truth. The fascination of reading other people's writings is to try to see their point of view and in so doing, widen the focus of our own apprehension. What was it Paul wrote? 'For now we see through a glass darkly....Now I know in part, but then I shall know as I am known.'

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## Umbilical

Sometimes I just want to write nothing to not risk a lack of originality.

But what does it matter?

If you were told by a man with a beard who knew all that all writing is unoriginal, would you drop your pen and pants?

I doubt it. So it's a non-issue for now.

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## Brasil

I usually write original things, but tonight I'd like to present to you all my version of a Joseph de Sousa's poem.
Joseph de Sousa is a Brazilian poet. His original poem is in portuguese, but I've made two versions: english and italian. I've change some words from the original for two reasons: 1- I intend to say something different from the original, with a few ideas from the original; 2- for make rhymes.
Here it goes:

*English version:*

I was thinking about the past, 
worried about what the future has.

My family has no gold.
I was born with no blue blood.

So I am free of virtues and sins
of popes and kings, 
princes and lords of land
who washed their hands.

I was made from the common clay
Where the fine wines became,
Where we have the guarantee
Of the glorious eternity

In the end of the journey, so long
I find on You,
the heaven from where my wings belong.

By myself, based upon the poem of Joseph de Sousa


*italian version:*
Pensavo al passato, duro,
preoccupato al futuro, oscuro.

La mia famiglia non ha oro
Sono nato senza sangue blu,
senza tesoro.

Sono privi di virtù e peccati 
dei re e principi decadenti.
Ho le mie mani lavate
dal sangue innocente.

Della morte perdonato,
Sono creato dalla sabbia
Dove il vino, buono, si diventerà 
In cui abbiamo la grazia 
Della nostra eternità 

I lunghi giorni passano,
Alla fine trovo su di Lei,
il cielo, dove le ali mie 
nelle Sue riposano.

Proprio mio, basata sulla poesia di Joseph de Sousa

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## blazeofglory

I thought very deeply and arrived at the idea that nothing is original except the creation of man by nature. Even our ideas are not our own. Since our ideas are not our own then how can our creativity, an assemblage of ideas be our own. We assemble ideas and the upshot is a piece of art or a poem or a story. 

We see kids on the shore playing and building castles of sand. Or others play some other types taking roles of kings or warriors and they do such things out of the memories they have gathered. They assemble ideas set them into a piece of game.

We write novels and claim we did on our own, everything our own. This is falsity and little is our own, almost all are borrowed from somewhere else.
We are simply and only assemblers of ideas. Even my language skills are not mine and they are in point of fact learned or combined blocks I have derived from my memory lanes or domains of memories.

Why boasting that you are an original writer? 

We all are in part or in whole in debt to others, and what we call claimably our own are derived or vulgarly or bluntly speaking plagiarized things.

The English language I know I am very poor at compared with the rest of other thread users is totally borrowed at an age I was totally grown up. 

The more we are skilled the better mimickers we can be. At times imitations are comparatively better than the originals

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## kasie

Who was it said, 'I have gathered a posy of other men's flowers -_ only the thread that binds them is my own_'?

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## blazeofglory

> Who was it said, 'I have gathered a posy of other men's flowers -_ only the thread that binds them is my own_'?


This is a wonderful expression and I am totally moved by it.
Yes, in point of fact we gather others' flowers or to say it a bit differently flowers already exist and we simply string them into a garland and even the thread is not our own.

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## poetman

> Creative, you think you are. I think not in the slightest. It is rubbish, gibberish and littered, fouled a hotchpotch of ideas, dead ones more often than not. 
> All you have is creaftmanship you connived through repetitions. Truth is simple. As simple as your nose, with no spectacles draped. Truth is as simple as planting and harvesting paddy. But you blanket yourself with coats, veneers of ideas shrouding and clouding truth. Your conceits, idealities, images and fancies earth reality. Your linguistic efficiencies with archaic styles crown you with the glory of being a luminary. At the base you are not the least bit better of if a comparison is stricken between your pedantries and a peasants who work on farm in the tropical blistering and sweltering sun. 
> We bigheaded men of letters or words are simply supercilious beings, and we try to shade truth so that all can not see it as it is.
> I do not think anyone is original in writing. All we do is repeat, or parroting we evolve into leading lights, starring in domains of art, literature and music.
> All I do is wordplay. Do not seek substance in what I write, for this is a fusion of imported ideas, in effect play on words. Punning shrewdly I try to seduce you into what I have to say, indeed making it funnier than the ordinary. 
> I feel ashamed, in fact embarrassed to speak truth directly; dwelling on imaginary stuff I fabricate ideas fooling people into ill conceived rashes. 
> Only nature is original and all those in proximity with nature. We are mimickers only.



I believe we can be original. What you speak is truth, and i dont believe can be argued- obviously nature is original, and we cannot be more original than the essence of that which is. Therefore i shall not hold refute for this, but it should be noted that we are also an essence in ourselves apart from nature. 

By this claim, i will say that our experiences albeit borrowed from everything we percieve (whether dreams or reality), is in truth, an act of our nature to produce things which become a part our originality. Our originality, to speak (knowing that we can call ourselves that) is our being, and all we do with it. For ex. when Galileo discovered further knowledge of space to the defiance of the church; Or when the game of baseball was invented- these were original, because they had not been done before. 

Furthermore, our efficiency to develop new insights into things unknown (a cure for a disease for example) is an act of our original being. Things we do not know, but come to know because of our experiences are things which are original.

Abruptly, i wish to end this, but i will strive my point, that you speak truth- which I dont believe can be argued. But what i intend to do is create the reason that we are original beings, who can do original things- that is until they are already known to us, therefore it is no longer original. So yes, in terms of writing, we lack any further intellect to create something original because it has all been restated, said and done- and that is due to time. But we really are original, and we can still create original things- just not things in literature because it's already there. Only if something new comes along that this life has never known, and someone writes about it, that would be original to us because it has never been done.

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## blazeofglory

> I believe we can be original. What you speak is truth, and i dont believe can be argued- obviously nature is original, and we cannot be more original than the essence of that which is. Therefore i shall not hold refute for this, but it should be noted that we are also an essence in ourselves apart from nature. 
> 
> By this claim, i will say that our experiences albeit borrowed from everything we percieve (whether dreams or reality), is in truth, an act of our nature to produce things which become a part our originality. Our originality, to speak (knowing that we can call ourselves that) is our being, and all we do with it. For ex. when Galileo discovered further knowledge of space to the defiance of the church; Or when the game of baseball was invented- these were original, because they had not been done before. 
> 
> Furthermore, our efficiency to develop new insights into things unknown (a cure for a disease for example) is an act of our original being. Things we do not know, but come to know because of our experiences are things which are original.
> 
> Abruptly, i wish to end this, but i will strive my point, that you speak truth- which I dont believe can be argued. But what i intend to do is create the reason that we are original beings, who can do original things- that is until they are already known to us, therefore it is no longer original. So yes, in terms of writing, we lack any further intellect to create something original because it has all been restated, said and done- and that is due to time. But we really are original, and we can still create original things- just not things in literature because it's already there. Only if something new comes along that this life has never known, and someone writes about it, that would be original to us because it has never been done.


I believe in resilience. Ideas perfect when they blend. What I said are not mine alone. Now leading yours matures me into my own domain of thinking. You have stricken some points I can not disagree until and unless I get swayed by preconceived notions

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## kasie

> It was Montaigne.


I thought it was, but I wasn't sure and couldn't find the book in which I first saw it. Thanks.

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## NickAdams

Original? No. Creative? Yes.

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## blazeofglory

> Original? No. Creative? Yes.


You are right Nick. We create things and we are really staunchly honest if we agree that we are not original but creative.

There are of course elements of truth in your sayings.

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## NickAdams

> You are right Nick. We create things and we are really staunchly honest if we agree that we are not original but creative.
> 
> There are of course elements of truth in your sayings.


The difficulty increases with each generation. There is a love/hate relationship with the authors I enjoy the most. I admire their discovery of something fresh, but am annoyed that my options have decreased. For me there is a competitive drive. I respond like a scientist: I want to get my discovery published in a journal before the next guy/gal.

I guess my opposition to pop-writers comes from my feelings that they are depleting the well. Their use of the fresh for the trivial seems a waste. Their textual diarrhea pours waste on to the floor.

I have this book on Heidegger titled Echoes, which I haven't read, but while skimming I found an interesting question: can an echo be original?

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## DickZ

> You are right Nick. We create things and we are really staunchly honest if we agree that we are not original but creative....


I suspect that I'll regret asking this, but what difference does it make whether we're original, or creative?

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## Grotesquery

I dearly hope I don't appear ignorant in saying so, but I see no shame in merely being creative rather than original. I've often thought of originality as false, and so this thread doesn't surprise me in the least. Not only with my own writing, but with much of the writing that I enjoy reading as well, I see no originality - after all, ideas must come from somewhere. 

Yet at the same time, originality doesn't concern me in the least. Do not misunderstand me, I'm not talking about my concern for plagiarism in which you steal words or ideas from another person and claim them as your own, as that's blatantly unacceptable. But when you take small bits and pieces of information from many different sources and put it together in your _own way_, what's so bad about that? Of course there's no such thing as pure originality - but pure creativity _is_ real. And as long as strong creativity is present, I see no problem at all.

Is it wrong of me to think in such a way? :/

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## blazeofglory

If we believe in God He or She is the creator of everything and all originated from God alone. 

If we do not, it is nature. Nothing is absolute original. Things are refinement, sophistication or modification or adaptation, variation of things. We assemble ideas and we claim we have created original pieces.

I express ideas that I learned from some other writers and I kind of assemble or mix using aide of words or craftsmanship I claim I have created something beautifully original.

Man made things are only alterations. Man is the finest creation of nature. Science how far it has gone in its advancement can not come up with an idea of creation, the way a living being is created. Till now no scientists have ever created anything as new as a living being. 

If I write a piece of poetry I first of all use imagination and this too is outsourced to some other poets, and I drape it with my own words and craftsmanship or blend with ideas that I acquired at some points in my life. 

All I claim to be original is not original in the real sense. They are offshoots or derivatives only.

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## dramasnot6

Only when I read it  :Wink:

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## zuozuo

If everything attach to "being",its alive.

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## xtianfriborg13

I think my writing isn't too original, I still get ideas from the authors whose works I read and loved. But I'll get there, writing my own stuff, I mean. With an original story.

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## cafolini

> I think my writing isn't too original, I still get ideas from the authors whose works I read and loved. But I'll get there, writing my own stuff, I mean. With an original story.


I thik original writing is a thing of the past. And even then it was so because there wasn't too much exposure to it being otherwise. Today we all share from a pool of inmense amounts of information, and those who manage to sell their stuff do it with mastery over what's shared, not with originality.

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## cacian

It depends I think original is impossible in writing.
Different is better.
We are all humans and therefore similar in more ways then none. 
But I can see it this way however to write is to achieve a different you and that is original.
The rest is writing for the sake of language meanings and a sense of being/belonging.
When I write I would like to think that I will eventually achieve a different me and that would be through my intellect, my views on life, my persona the way I interact with people. My views on life should improve and so would I. I do not separate the two. 
To write is to see life through a different lense.

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