What makes a great writer? Someone who is creative, someone with good grammar skills, someone who can put their thoughts on to paper. When I hear the quote “good writers borrow, great writers steal”, it doesn’t make me think that great writers are plagiarizing of copying ideas from other people. I think that the great writers are stealing their emotions. A good writer can write about how they feel and put their feelings into it but a great writer digs deep down inside and reflects on their emotions and puts that into words. So I like to think that great writers are stealing their emotions from deep inside. It might sound crazy but if you think hard enough about it, it makes sense. It’s almost impossible to judge because you can never tell if how someone feels deep inside only that person can tell. These great authors can write about it. When your reading a story and your teacher explains that the blue scarf represents the authors emotions in his time of depression you think wow what a crazy teacher. I really think that these great writers drop us hints like that, that’s how they make their books so appealing because they put them selves 100% in their work. I admire people like that because showing your emotions to anyone isn’t always easy but publishing your emotions has to be extremely difficult. Revealing yourself to the general public opens you up for judgment. Everyone knows that being judged is awful so imagine everyone judging you, imagine an English class discussing your feelings and writing about it. Your emotions and thoughts are the only thing 100% private and now they’re in the open. I wouldn’t be able to do it so kudos to Shakespeare.
PS: GO NOLES!!!!!!!!!!
First of all, I like the garnet and gold font colors. I think that some writers think the same way as other writers. For example, a writer is feeling depressed, but I bet somewhere else in the world a writer is also depressed. There are so many people in this world that there is a high probability that someone is going to have the same ideas. I wouldn't call it plagiarism, but its ideas we humans had over many, many years ago.
ReplyDeletei personally think "borrowing" or "stealing" from another writer is not as bad as some people make it seem. everyone has different and creative minds, a mix of ideas from several people could add so much to a paper making it a master piece. This doesnt just happen in writing it self. musicians sample other artists beats, riffs, choruses etc. its pretty awesome that someone can take a part of a song or a writing and add their own creative touch to it.
ReplyDeleteI think that "borrowing" or "stealing" really isn't taking somebody else's ideas. It really means to be inspired by other writers and being open to new ideas. Learning about other ideas from other authors teaches the writer about new writing techniques and topics that one would never know about. Then the writer can improve on those writing techniques and expand on those topics. So they are expanding the conversation then other writers can join in and expand on those new ideas. In writing "stealing" isn't stealing as long as you are building new ideas on top of old ones.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the quote because great writers are able to expand upon preexisting ideas and put their own creative twists on them. They are not trying to steal ideas but become inspired by them. They hide there emotions with symbols that we have to decipher. This is what makes the stories so great because they are not so obvious. They can be interpreted in my ways.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you interpreted this quote. And also, awesome font colors :D I totally agree with you about the judgement thing, you have to be pretty strong-minded and confident in your words to publish your writings. That does take a lot of guts, but I think it is worth it when you have people reading your work. There will always be a negative and positive critic for everything you say and/or do; that is why you shouldn't live by other peoples' standards.
ReplyDeleteInteresting way of thinking about the quote. I don't know if I would have come up with that. It blows my mind when I think about all of the hidden meanings that authors have in their writing. I have always wondered if they sit down before they start writing and list all of the little things.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with this blog. I never really viewed the quote like that but it totally make sense like that. Great writers must have passion, stealing their inspirations emotions. This quote has nothing to do with plagiarism, it is all about the passion and feelings that writers use and how great writers are able to steal this feeling.
ReplyDeleteI honestly never viewed this comment like that but now that I have it makes a lot of sense. It's just like in class, when we have to read a poem or story and then write our own version or feelings about it. We aren't stealing from the author, we are just inspired by their writing.
ReplyDeleteYou definitely express a different view about this quote than most people would. I would have never thought of it like that, that great writers steal their emotions rather than someone else's words. It is definitely a positive twist. I also like how you pointed out the clues that writers sometimes throw into their stories that make it more personal without being directly specific about their own lives or feelings. Emotions and feelings are sometimes a big part of a writers stories, so the fact that you describe they dig deep inside themselves is very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI never thought of it that way before: "good writers borrow and great writers steal". It's true that the best writers out there use their own emotions to write some of their best works. Good writers write without their emotions which is why they are only good and not great. Great writers are also inspired by other authors which doesn't mean that they are plagiarizing from their original work. I also give props to the great authors that put themselves out there which isn't always easy to do.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really cool slant on this quote. You said you didn’t think about it as stealing meaning plagiarism but that’s exactly what I thought… your mindset on the matter is way more interesting, haha. But yeah, it’s scary to think that some of these writers are expressing the only bits of themselves not visible to others, it’s like they really have nothing to hide, and maybe that’s what it takes to be a great writer? I don’t know, just maybe something to think about!
ReplyDeleteYou really KNOW how to post a blog. This is pretty legit. However, I don't entirely agree with what you interpret from this quote. I agree that it isn't referring to stealing the author's works, but I do not think that it was referring to stealing emotions either. I think that it was referring more to the fact that when we read something that really inspires us, the ideas we get from those writings were not actually incepted by us. We may not know it, but most of the things we write were inspired by other author's first, which in a sense could be considered stealing.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with this blog. In English we have read poems and narratives to help inspire us to write our own. When we read them they evoke emotion in us and help us to come up with our own ideas. In a way a lot of authors are inspired by someone else's work. Whether it be a painting, a poem, someone's thought, a song, just about anything could be traced back to another person's work. To me that is not stealing is just being creative.
ReplyDeleteFirst off let me just say that I like the garnet and gold color scheme. More importantly, I would like to say that I like what you got from this quote. I personally was not able to pull out that idea but now that you mention it, I agree with you! I definitely agree that a good writer is one that can put their thoughts on paper. This is not easy for many people but luckily for me, it is the only way that I am good at expressing myself. Without embracing your point of view, I would disagree with this quote because I do not believe stolen ideas make someone “great.” Being a ‘great writer’ means that you are original and capable of expressing your own thoughts and feelings.
ReplyDeleteI can see your point in this post, but thats not exactly what I get from it. That may also be because I completely disagree with the quote. I don't agree with the idea that writers steal, because if it was actually stealing it would be plagiarism. The concept of stealing ideas makes no sense because every writer will put his/her own personality into it. Its kind of hard to describe, let alone have an opinion on this subject because the meaning is so abstract.
ReplyDeleteAre you saying that great writers are stealing from "deep inside" their minds and finding their emotions that way, or are you saying that a great writer is stealing his idea's from "deep inside" someone else's work?... It is definitely a hard thing to put your emotions and feeling out on the table for everyone to see, but i don't think that all writers are writing about their own emotions, i think most of the stories they make up are just from their imaginations, which doesn't necessarily correlate to their own emotions.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read that quote I thought, "Wow, that's discouraging! Great writers are simply thieves." Then I reflected on how I would "steal" others perspectives on a subject, and then I looked inward. By looking inward I would obtain a new perspective, thought, or emotion and it would be all my own. Like you said, authors put one-hundred precent of themselves into their work because it reflects their emotions. So if another author wrote a book on a man named Hamlet, his book would likely be completely different from Shakespeare's. The main plot would be the same, but the context, dialogue, and the underlying emotions that ooze from the pages themselves would be very, very different.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read this quote at first, I automatically thought that they were talking about plagiarizing. But it's so much more than that. I really liked how you thought of it as "great writers dig deep inside their feelings and write them out." I think it takes a lot for someone to do that. Especially making it for the whole world to read. I also have to admire writers like that because in order to make a living off of your book, you're going to want to make a connection with your audience so they can relate to what you're writing about.
ReplyDeleteThe quote was kind of a shock to me. Great writers steal? That is craziness. I thought about it and realized that it is a true statement just written in an obscured way. In my opinion, great writers write an idea they have or think and other people or writers agree or disagree with that idea. One writer's idea can inspire any other writer in a positive or negative way and cause them to write brilliantly because of that idea. Basically they are inspired and want to build on ideas either agreeing or disagreeing. As my roommate once said quoting Thomas Foster "There are no new ideas".
ReplyDeleteI've never really thought of a writer as a "thief," rather, I feel that they do borrow similar concepts to effectively convey their stories. I mean, if I see someone doing something in a more efficient manner than I am, you can bet that the next time I do whatever it was we were doing, I'm going to try they're method. Writing is mainly based off of emotion, and you can not fake emotion and be successful with it, because you can not truly mock that emotion. So in response to the quote, writers borrow concepts, because emotion can not truly be faked.
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