A Familiar Voice--Yours or Mine?

Are you a writer? If so, does your own voice sound so-o-o familiar at times that you stop and wonder if you've heard those same words from, say, another writer? And if so, do you further ask what would happen if he or she found out?

With me it happens often. I'll write a paragraph and it will sound so familiar that I'm convinced the words aren't mine. And who knows? Maybe they aren't. If not, whose are they? Where did they come from? I have a theory about it:

For those of us who rely on strong memory and love of language to inform our writing, we risk copying somebody without meaning to. I think of historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose, both of whom suffered lawsuits and near-disgrace for writing passages that sounded like other passages by other writers in earlier books. It is hard for me to believe either of the accused was a plagiarist. But I didn't follow the courtroom facts of either case, so I can't claim knowledge of them.

I do know this: the intentional lifting of others' work is real and occurs in dishonorable people. Ask Will, one of my former students. Nearly the entire manuscript of some brilliant historical research he did in high school was stolen and put between hard covers by a couple of pikers who sold the work as their own. The case was charitably settled, thanks to Will's charitable nature, but the lesson for me is this: pay attention or risk paying big bucks. I confess to running on "scared of it" at least half the time I'm writing.