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The thlot pickens

Ahem, my, I was in a bad mood that day wasn't I? Relax, normal service will be resumed.
So over on ILE there was an almighty brouhahah after some chap said he woas going to produce a book of threads using cafepress. Nasty words like "copyright infringemen" were bandied about.
Now, regardless of how silly the entire thing was (and those getting angry at him were pretty much in the right) the one thing which I did take from it was how jolly seriously everyone seemed to take themselves. I mean, I write and everything, but I've cheerfully given poems away to people without any thought as to where they may turn up. For all I know, my copyright is being badly infringed as I write this, it doesn't bother me overly; I can always write more poems. Neither do I think that anything that I write is of such massive importance that I'm going to get in a snit about it, but that's just me, it would appear. I probably should have contributed this to the thread in question, and would have done were it not for the fact that the board can be dreadful for descending into interminable sniping, and I had no intention of contributing to that one iota. The two or three ILE regulars who read this can feel free to agree or disagree, as ever.

But it did get me thinking abou the nature of my own work (which can only be a good thing). Now, I have an extensive body of work, some of it in print, yet I treat it with a throwaway disregard (see comments above), as nothing terrifies me more than the idea that I might get precious about it. I cannot STAND people who get uppity about their work when they have achieved the level of what I have achieved i.e. very little. Is this wrong of me? I know that my work is as valid as anybody elses, but the idea of considering myself to be as valid as those I admire strikes me as more than a little distasteful.

God I'm so fucking English sometimes...

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