William Rabkin has launched his own blog and starts it off with a humorous post ribbing author Neale Donald Walsch for stealing someone else's work. I love Walsch's excuse:
“All I can say now — because I am truly mystified and taken aback by this — is that someone must have sent it to me over the Internet ten years or so ago,” Mr. Walsch wrote. “Finding it utterly charming and its message indelible, I must have clipped and pasted it into my file of ‘stories to tell that have a message I want to share.’ I have told the story verbally so many times over the years that I had it memorized … and then, somewhere along the way, internalized it as my own experience.”
I am thinking of internalizing John Grisham's next novel as my own experience. I'd like to internalize his wealth as my own experience, too, but haven't figured out how to do that yet.
A television producer pal of mine who created a very successful reality show (101 episodes for a major cable network)fired an employee for theft. This week he discovered the guy stole more than loot and paperclips. A new network reality show is, point for point, distinguishing feature by distinguishing feature,a show created by my pal. He was preparing to pitch it when he saw it on TV. Who has “created by” credit? You got it –the fired employee.