Trying Not to Be a Copy Cat: The Threat of "Cryptomnesia"

I find myself at the moment barricaded behind walls of books, as I try to write myself down the West Coast of Africa, following the Portuguese for my book Making Waves: The Portuguese Adventure. During the last two years I’ve read many primary sources as well as more recent histories and studies of what this small nation has done over the past 700 years. Now it’s time to put the pieces together along with my observations during the trips I took to research my last three non-fiction books. The publication date for the new book will be fall 2010, and I've promised my publisher Véhicule Press that I'll have a completed manuscript by next March.

It’s a fascinating experience, but unfortunately sometimes the facts and other bits of knowledge I’ve come across (and noted carefully) begin to run together. I am trying very hard to document all my sources, even though the book be written as one to be read for pleasure by the general reader. What I don’t want to do is inadvertently lift an idea from somewhere else and present it as my own.

That’s why I found an article about “cryptomnesia” so interesting. The idea is that such a thing as unconscious plagiarism exists. The truth is that some big names have been caught doing it: the article mentions that “Nietzsche ripped off a passage of Thus Spoke Zarathustra from something he'd read as a child, and former Beatle George Harrison was found guilty, in court, of unconsciously copying the music for his hit song, "My Sweet Lord."

There are ways to avoid doing it, author Russ Juskalian writes. “Taking diligent notes, reminding oneself to remember not just a good idea, but also its source, or simply pondering whether the clever phrase that popped into one's head is original, helps fend off cryptomnesia.”

So I find myself thumbing through my notes and the books surrounding me frantically, trying to make sure I know just where things come from. The mistakes, as writers always say in the acknowledgements, will be, of course, all mine.