Of Alcatraz and Theft

I fulfilled a longtime (and touristy) dream of mine last weekend: I went to Alcatraz. The prison, which housed such notable criminals as Al Capone and Robert Stroud "the Birdman," is a formidable structure, standing alone in the wind on its rocky little island in the San Francisco Bay. The trip was informative and interesting, but my personal fascination goes beyond its historical significance, and into the literary. Alcatraz is often compared to Azkaban prison in the Harry Potter books, and I spent most of the audio tour imagining Sirius Black sitting in one of the cells. (I may or may not be planning to photoshop Dementors into the pictures I took.)

Fangirl-ing aside, the trip got me thinking in a more serious vein about writers and our penchant for theft. Not actual theft, of course (though I suppose, statistically, there are likely some shoplifting or bank-robbing writers out there). Rather, the practice of borrowing things from the world around us and writing them into our work, be it thinly concealed or not. There is a fine legal line to be cautious of, obviously: libel and plagiarism are serious offenses. But "creative repurposing," as I like to call it (or, to be gentler still, "taking inspiration from the world around us") is a writer's realm. Some would even say it is our forte.

I commit this kind of theft most often without noticing I am doing so, and it is only in later rereading that I recognize the snippets I've torn from real life. Sometimes it's something very small and specific, like the bald spot of the man next to me on the train. Sometimes it's bigger, like an entire location, or a character based on someone I know. Our surroundings have a profound impact on us, and I believe they usually seep into our writing somehow, whether in terms of setting, character, or even simply tone.

Tell me, Wrimos… Do any of you have literary based-on-real-life places you'd like to visit? And what about your own thieving—what have you stolen from the world at large?

– Paige

Photo by Flickr user Robert Brun