Gripping With Both Hands 1
When I was young I was in a writing course, and we were assigned the writing a short story. It could be about anything we wanted, anything at all. I was in the middle of reading Anne of Green Gables. I loved Anne of Green Gables. And so, inspired by her, I started to write about a different little orphan girl, finding her way into a new home.
My teacher sent it back with her critique written to my mother: I feel as though they’re just trying to re-write Anne.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It was a terrible story. I was around 13-14 years old. My writing was atrocious, and exactly as melodramatic and unreasonable as you’d expect a young teen’s writing to be.
But that wasn’t what my teacher criticised, was it? She didn’t write, “The prose is unreadable” or “Why have they used 6 adverbs in a row,” or “Please tell them to stop overusing a thesaurus.”
She wrote, I feel as though they’re just trying to re-write Anne, as though I’d cheated the assignment somehow.
That hurt.
That still hurts, and I’m still mad about it! Why? Because so what if I was? I’m allowed! You’re allowed to write fan fiction, no matter what, but more than that, I’d created an entirely new character with her own story to tell. I wasn’t rewriting Anne, I was writing Priscilla. If she hadn’t known I was reading Anne of Green Gables at the time, would she have even thought to criticise me in that fashion? Probably not.
In other words, specifically because I was enjoying something, I was told I shouldn’t write it. That it was cheating.
Bullshit.
Do you know the advice I hear most often from writers? “Read.” Read everything, pick it apart, note the sentence structure, the tone, the characterisation, the things that made you grip the book with both hands and keep reading. And then write with what you’ve learned! That’s called learning. That’s called using your resources. And it’s not cheating, it’s smart.
So, my advice?
Rewrite Anne. Take a piece apart, digest it, learn from it, write it. Use the inspiration from your favourite things to write more things! That’s how art grows and morphs and it’s perfectly okay.
Cite your sources. Thank your inspirations. And rewrite Anne.
1.
This essay was originally published in Spark! newsletter, Volume 35, on 2019-02-21.