As a writer, you simply have to take a leap of faith that no one wants to steal your work. It just doesn't happen. Agents and editors are not sitting at their desks, rubbing their hands together as they await their next victim. Nor are other writers trolling the Internet looking for ideas to steal. I mean sure, you can probably find a few examples to prove me wrong. But you can also find examples of people choking to death on water. The point is that the odds are so astronomically low that they don't merit concern.
The sad truth behind this is that it is so difficult to make any money from writing that there's no incentive for theft. We all believe in our work, and cling to the hope that we have the next million dollar idea. But realistically, why would someone risk plagiarizing, only to have to spend a year researching and queryng agents, rewriting the letter again and again as it gets rejected? And that's not even considering how many months of rewrites will follow before there's even a slim chance at publication and an even slimmer chance of making any real money at it.
And one final point. As the author, you automatically own the copyright to your work and have legal protection. So try to relax and not let these fears get in your way.
Instead, worry about the real things ... Are you creating believable characters your readers will care about? Are your storylines fresh and exciting? Are your sentences exquisite and evocative? Is there enough coffee, vodka, or red wine in the house to get you through the week? (Water, as you know, can kill you.)
Now get back to work ...
6 comments:
I love that you say there isn't enough money to be made to make stealing worthwhile. That's great.
Theft, like almost everything else, is value-driven. Case in point. Thieves used to break into my car regularly, looking for my GPS. But they stopped about a year ago when the devices went down in price. It's just no longer worth the criminals' time and effort. I wonder what they're stealing now. iPads, I suppose ...
Fascinating subject, Ellen. I'll have to check out the rest of your blog! Here's my take:
I've been posting comments on USA Today's open forums which accompany each of their articles for about four years now. More than once, I have seen "my" ideas and even snippets of my posts used by a well known pundit or radio host. My reaction is generally pride that I may be influencing a national discussion. But there's always some doubt as to whether the idea was actually taken from my post or whether the author thought of it independently. Even so, I like to brag my friends that it was my idea.
While it would take anyone years of dedicated work to become a nationally syndicated columnist, if you already ARE a nationally syndicated columnist (or a joke writer for Jay Leno), why wouldn't you cruise these forums in order to vet your ideas or gain new insights?
Similarly, the potential perp in a fiction plagiarism would be an established author who doesn't have to pitch his book, and who has hit the wall with writer's block. What's to stop him from lifting ideas and text from someone else's unpublished work to which he had access?
The work and ideas DO have value, it's just that exploiting it takes a prohibitive amount of time and effort. But if you've already got access to the Publishers' hype machinery, then using other people's ideas would become way more tempting.
No one steals stuff from my car anymore, either, because one night I shot the little puke and chucked his corpse in the river. Ha ha, just kidding. There, I've just given someone the nucleus of a short story plot . . .
It's a good question, Dan, and here's why that scenario is incredibly unlikely:
It is f*cking hard to write a book. And there's just no way someone else's idea is going to resonate deeply enough to get even the cheesiest hack to spend a year of his or her life working on the material. Without that passion, it's pretty near impossible. In fact, even WITH the passion, writing a book seems impossible on most days!
That said, I just got this great idea for a book about a guy who shoots someone for breaking into his TRUCK and dumps the body in the SWAMP. Whee! It's original!! xx
So well said as usual Ellen. The only thing I could possibly add is that the reason novel manuscripts are so rarely ripped off by agents and editors is because reputations are at stake. If they don't get and keep the respect of their colleagues, it's all over.
Different story in Hollywood however. Beware of wolves dressed in Dolce & Gabbana. There not even your emails are safe!
Good point about reputations, Saralee!
And Hollywood. *shudder* All that money brings out the worst in humanity ...
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