Creeped Out

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

Plagiarism Abounds

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Thomas Mann

It happened, it really happened. I was looking at someone’s blog this morning and they had a post titled, HOPE. A poem followed, all out of stanza form mind you, but there it was, my words.

There was no name, so if you were a reader of this persons blog, you’d assume that he or she wrote those beautiful words. But guess what? They we MY beautiful words, and I was not receiving credit for writing such words.

I keep proofs of all my poetry and writing. Rough drafts and what not, all my work is copyrighted and lawfully protected. But to see your work on someone’s blog, without credit has a tendency to raise the antenna and make one wonder.

I know that when we release our work publicly, there is always the chance of someone stealing it. But we as writer’s respect one another and have a code within our community that plagiarism is unacceptable in all ways, shape and form.

If I’m quoting someone, I always give credit to the author. Why? It is the morally right thing to do and it is showing great respect for the author. We live in a morally corrupt world, where people do what they want with no respect to any other human being. We have a diverse world where beliefs are not all the same, colors differ, religions are being trashed, and people are not being exposed in their best light.

But among writer’s, plagiarism is the most feared aspect among writers. Who feels like pouring their blood spilled pain onto the paper, working their fingers to the bone, exhausted by the aspect of tapping for hours on end, only to have that work stolen? I say stolen because anything that is taken and not rightfully the persons who did the taking, that in any place in the world is called STOLEN.

Plagiarism is stolen work any way you look at it. I post that all my work is mine and copyrighted, and that is unlawful to use without my permission. Following my blog DOES NOT give you permission to steal my work, or use my hard work, and post it as your own.

I’m honored that someone loves my writing so much that they would take it, but please, give me credit for doing all the work. Ask my permission before taking. And first and foremost, RESPECT the WRITER in ME!! And I’ll respect you.