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  by Paul Phillips

When does inspiration become asphyxiation?

8/1/2018

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I've been working on the aforementioned novella, the one I jokingly referred to as Stranger Things meets Proust (or vice versa).

Which means I've been thinking about Stephen King again, and specifically The Body. I don't even remember reading it (although it's possible I did), but I saw Stand By Me all those years ago and I've read other Stephen Kings, and things inspired by - or inspiring - Stephen King and I can kind of hear it in my head. Even if I'm mishearing it, it's there.

So the nagging question is: do I make a point of reading/re-reading it now? It would help me know what to avoid, in case of accidental plagiarism. It might even inspire me too.

Or would it strangle and suffocate everything I'm trying to do? Would I start tip-toeing so carefully around his story that I'd never get anywhere in my own? Or worse, might it even prompt me, unconsciously, to write some kind of pastiche?

OK. I'm gasping already - a fish on the riverbank. I'll throw myself back in. No King until the first draft's done. Then... 

​We'll see.



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    My story...

    I've been writing for as long as I can remember (I think my first letter was a P). I got a degree writing about other people's writing and ever since then I've earned a living writing commercially, one way or another. But I never stopped writing and refining my own stuff. I just didn't do anything with it, until now.

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