I've done some writing/art classes at the homeschool cooperative to which we belong. this is how I met Isaac, who was 8 when we met and now is 10. a very serious writer. his writing does a lot of processing of events in his life. his father left home for another woman, Isaac's recently suffered seizures. in his grand oeuvre (so far), there's a character called Lillist, who murders the protagonist's father, and the son strives to avenge the death. she's a witch. she gets killed but keeps coming back. ouch. later stories have been more diffuse, and include many murders and deaths. neither Beth or I have been able to do a class with him this fall. the person teaching him now is worried about his plagiarism, which is a terrible thing to do to him. he's always been honest about his source matrial. Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Sherlock Holmes are all obvious sources. his usage is no different from Tolkien's usage of material. Isaac takes elements and makes them his own. he shouldn't be made guilty about the influence these works have on him. especially if you take the matter of Art out of consideration. he writes from a tremendous necessity. anything that might forestall that can only be detrimental. but as I say, he's original, no matter if he commandeers elemenst from other books and movies. I read a piece yesterday, more clearly a poem than most of his work. you get the residue of some painful story amidst a language of dire need. he said it came from the movie House of Mirth. which I recognized as am Edith Wharton novel, tho I haven't read it. you cannot glean the plot of the novel/movie from his poem, but the poem bears an incredible sense of love and loss. I wish I could make a copy of the poem. it's not the work of a child but a poet. his spelling is creative (think Lt William Clark), often hard to make out. I'd worry more about that than his originality, but I wouldn't even worry about that.