L'occhio del ladro

You always have to be careful around writers, my friend laughs during a presentation of his latest novel. They steal everything you say, especially from other writers. The moment you start telling a story – “Oh man, guys, you’ll never believe what happened to me the other day-“ they turn to you with this little gleam in their eye, l’occhio del ladro, the eyes of a thief. “Oh?” they say. “And just what did happen to you the other day?” “Uh – nothing, I swear!” Bad writers borrow, great writers steal. I’m pretty sure I’ve both appropriated and misquoted that line from Stravinsky. Who took it from T.S. Eliot, who I would call the original source if he hadn’t probably lifted it from someone else anyway. I’m not a writer, but I want to be one someday. This blog is my gym and sandbox: the current objective is simply to get ideas on the page and hit “publish”, exposure therapy for the terminally self-critical. I deliberately make my terrible first drafts see the light of day be...