Its Time To Confess: I’ve become A Thief.

I’m about to bare my soul, not in a confessional box with a benevolent priest, no, as after much thought, I have decided to go public.

You see the thing is, I steal.

There, I’ve said it!

I know now that kleptomania ran in my family and I fear my genetic code has stored that fatal flaw and now, after all of this time that gene is like a garden bursting into life.

I don’t actually steal “things” as such and so its quite safe for you to invite me into your home as the silverware will remain intact. Quite frankly the fear that goes with stealing an inanimate object and the chance of being caught terrifies me and thus I have never been tempted.

A shoplifter I am not, in fact recently I inadvertently wheeled my trolley full of groceries out of a supermarket without paying! This ‘oversight’ has haunted me ever since as I didn’t take the trouble to return with the stolen loot and make a full confession. No doubt my day of judgment will arrive one day.

However I do believe I have become a ‘Master Thief ‘because you see, I consciously thieve each and every day and don’t show an ounce of remorse.

So what am I stealing?

You!

I’m stealing you.

When I made the conscious decision to become a writer full time it didn’t take me long to realize that my ‘booty bag of ideas, and clever wit’ was sadly empty and if I were to succeed I would have to embark on a literary life of crime.

That’s not to say I am a plagiarist, although sometimes I am sorely tempted to ‘lift’ a word here or a phrase there but these days that would be akin to a shoplifter stuffing his or her bag with bounty in full view of the store detective and the surveillance cameras at the same time.

Theft I believe falls into two categories and these are envy and covetousness. Envy because some bugger wrote such a wonderful paragraph that you wish you had, and covetousness because you desperately want it to be yours.

My tactics are in fact rather brazen, as I’ve adopted the thief’s best disguise, which is to hide in plain sight. After years of copywriting and latterly being a novelist I do believe that I have perfected the art of the steal to the point where I have honed my craft so well that I could even make David Sedaris look like an amateur.

To be a word thief the only tools required are a notebook and a reliable pen coupled with the ability to whip both items out at the drop of a hat in order to record (read, steal) what you have just seen or heard.

My hunting grounds for my devious deeds are the taverns and salubrious bars where all walks of society gather. I sit scribbling away and it doesn’t take long for someone to ask, “ What are you writing there?” Right away, if the quarry looks juicy, you’re in and in no time flat that curious person will have dropped a ‘gem’ of a phrase or inadvertently given you an idea. I will then, with not a shred of remorse, wait for an opportunity when the ‘victim’s’ attention is distracted and scribble down those rolled gold words.

Inventing characters follows the same procedure whereby I surreptitiously ‘stalk’ my prey watching and recording a person’s movements. How they sit, stand, inhale a cigarette, laugh or sometimes cry. I have no idea who these people are or what they do, I don’t really care, as all I want is just a little piece of them.

Somebody once said, “ Mediocre writers borrow, great writers steal” and once I had read that I adopted it as my mantra. So there it is, a full confession and so the next time you invite me into your home it’s not the silverware you should be concerned about, rather, its what you say.