When you are both a reader and a writer, how do you deal with it? I mean to say, that both requires equal attention, peace and time and for me both mingles with each other. While I am reading, sometimes I get ideas of what I can write, but then as a writer, I think that somehow if I write about that particular thought, it would be duplicitous. It will be a by-product of someone else’s work and then I will be ‘not original’. But then when I do write it down, I do feel that what I was reading was just a way of an inspiration for me to create something else. Now, when I put it that way, I don’t sound like a cheater, but deep down I still wonder if it is original or am I just plagiarizing. Now, if the later is the situation, then I should stop writing with immediate effect. I have no notions of copying work.
In various fields of art, it has been repeatedly said, you look for inspirations; sometimes inspiration doesn’t come to you. And if we are looking for it, chances are we look for it in similar fields and even if the filed is different, it is we who are looking for the so-called inspiration, and so our options are limited. Don’t get me wrong; I am not justifying myself in any way. I have no intentions of doing so, what so ever. What I am trying to decipher is what if some of my writings are a product of something that I read? Now, if it was re-telling I would simply declare that it is a re-telling, but what if some specific idea, image, or even a line sticks with me and brings out an entire different picture?
I don’t know if you guys go through this, but as a reader I do face this occasionally which makes me trash some of the things I wrote, and if not trash, they remain unpublished, hidden on my hibernating folders and journals!
Do share your thoughts on this one. What do you think about it? Does this happen with you?
Moushmi Radhanpara 
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