Creeped Out

Prov. 6:30 Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry;
***

Yesterday was kind of scary. I know my friend rectified the use of my work by putting my name on it, but it had me wondering about the whole using my poem for mass emails without my name on it.

He received my poem in his mail, without my name on it, liked it so much, touched him actually, that he posted it on his blog. New to the writing world and the Blog Factory, he just isn’t sure of the etiquette used by writers, or bloggers for that matter.

We writers are a different breed. We respect each and every writer right down to quotations. If you read my blog, you know I have a Quotation Saturday. I don’t post a quote normally unless it has an author’s name. The sites I visit have a lot of Anonymous quotes, and I usually pass them up, unless it is a really a great quote.

Why? Because I think authors deserve to be recognized, even if it is just a quote. You wrote it, you claim it!

The incident made me want to delete all my poetry, here and in f2k. But if I do that, I am cowering and giving the thief the right to steal, and no I won’t do that! Nimal DID NOT steal my work and as soon as he found out it was my work, he put my name on the poem and apologized. It was not his fault, it was the person who emailed it to him, and he promised to help me find the culprit, because it is what it is. Someone stole my poem, didn’t bother finding the author, and is emailing it to people.

What next? Will that person send it in and get it published under his/her name? Will they make money, even if it is pennies? off of MY hard work? This is just unacceptable in this industry. writers respect writers and what we do when we found that we’ve done wrong is rectify the situation. If this person can email my poem without trying to find the author, whose work will he/she steal next?

I know if it was a poet, they understand the respect it takes and even borrowing one line of my work,  they know they need to give me credit for that one line. When we are writing a novel, and we use quotes or lines from songs, we can not legally use it without getting permission from the author of said line/quote/song. I read a lot of Stephen King and he’s used tons of song lyrics, lines from poems, etc. But in the front of the book amongst the tiny print, you’ll see, ‘USED WITH PERMISSION’ and it lists WHERE he got the permission from, either author, or the author’s estate if he/she is deceased.

My quote of today? “Writer’s respect writers. If you don’t, then YOU are NOT a writer, you are a thief, a moral misfit.” Joni Zipp (end quote)