Jane Wenham Jones
I belong to a long-established writing group which meets regularly to hear members’ work and give constructive criticism and support. We have recently welcomed a new member, who has just moved into the area and is a beginner writer. She is a very nice, friendly woman but after only a few sessions she is causing tensions in the group, because she blatantly takes her ideas from the rest of us. If I write a story about a missing dog, she’ll come up with one about a missing cat. One of the other members wrote a first chapter set around the graveside and a week later she turned up with a piece of prose that began in a funeral parlour. Nothing too serious, you might say, but at our last gathering she read out a story that had the same first line – altered very slightly – as one she had heard the previous week. Some of us are published and read extracts from our works in progress so you can understand the concern. One member did point out the similarity in plot between her latest tale and one she’d heard from me and she laughed and said ‘great minds’. What do we do?