Your Own Words

I never thought I’d be writing about this on my blog, but here we are.

Recently, someone borrowed my website copy. Not the general feel of it, my actual words. So I have a question about originality: why copy someone else’s way of describing themselves when you have an entire life of your own to draw from?

Why are you drawing from mine?

You don’t know the life I’ve lived. We are not carbon copies, and I can guarantee that. I’ve lived a rather unusual life, and adding companionship to the mix has certainly given me plenty to draw on. Maybe that’s what makes me worth copying. But if you feel you have to copy another woman to get booked, you’ve already lost.

I don’t take inspiration from anyone else in this line of work. I keep mostly to myself. I love company, but I love my own time just as much. I know a few people in the industry, but I largely stay in my own lane, for exactly this reason.

Lately I’ve watched women accuse each other of copying their elegance. Since when can one person lay claim to elegance? Fine, we can all buy new clothes. But writing, and the way you are as a person, is something you embody.

So here’s my question for anyone with a website. If someone removed your photographs and your name, would anything in the writing still sound like you? Or is it a pile of words like “elegant” and “high class” that tell the reader nothing about who they’re meeting?

I rewrote my website because I changed. My voice changed. I’m more comfortable with who I am, and I’ve shed a lot of the pretence this industry runs on. Some women like that style, but it’s no longer me. I want to spend time with people who like the same things I do, or who can open my eyes to new ones, and I’m entitled to be choosy about the experiences I say yes to.

My writing is usually spurred by something that irritates me, and this was no exception.

You can borrow someone’s words. You can’t borrow the life behind them.