“Borrowing” from another writer is lazy — no matter who that writer is.
If you’re a writer, and you haven’t yet read the NYT piece about being a “bad art friend” — please — dash over there and have a read. It is a whole lot of bizarre on all sides. And I have so many thoughts about it, I couldn’t limit myself to a way too long FB post or a way too short tweet.
No matter how you look at the thing — it’s poor form all around. And that’s putting it mildly.
The short of it is: Two women writers know each other from a writing group and teaching. One moves away, donates a kidney and looks for a lot of attention about it. The other finds this a little nutty and writes a story about it. The writer never tells the donor she wrote the story. The donor finds out about it. Asks the writer about it. Writer, at first, ignores her then calls her a bad art friend because writers lift from life all the time.
Hubbub ensues because donor feels exploited. Writer says nah. The story gets attention. Then donor finds out that writer, in fact, plagiarized a letter donor posted on FB. Writer has since changed the letter because the work is about to get a lot of attention. Donor is still upset, goes to extraordinary lengths to get the writer discredited. Writer remains…
