She stood and stared, stiffly wide-eyed. I'd just suggested that imagination relies on knowledge of generic convention.
"If an author is not careful," she added unhelpfully, "their innate intertextuality will consume every original thought they've ever had. They may become a writer who 'lards their leane booke with the fat of others' workes.'"
"I might, I might," I concurred, refocussing the conversation from authors onto me (as I'd intended from the beginning of this discussion) "In fact, plagiarising others in my attempt to draw attention to the effort I make not to plagiarise, is arguably a worse wrong."
"Be honest about it then," she said. "Draw attention to all its instances and then none can accuse: Anonymous Author, they are the words of another."
"But so much has been written over the years by spurious imitators and attributed to me, that despite the fact there is only one Anonymous Author, there happens to be a little bit of Anonymous Author in all of us," I claimed, quite possibly inaccurately, at the very least lacking evidence to support the assertion. I was excited now. I carelessly plucked words from the air and combined them in ways that may or may not mimic language that had occurred before these implausibly original sentences were written. Thrilled with the idea of forbidden facsimiles and wrongful copyright I decided to let them lie on the page where they fell, unique or not. TM ©*
*This piece of intellectual property can be neither trademarked nor copyrighted as it has been plagiarised. TM ©
Welcome. Anonymous Author holds a mirror to the face of humanity, asking what it really means to be human,
and in doing so blurs the line between what is good and bad writing.
