Writers and Plagiarism
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JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
Lately I’ve seen in the news medium how some writers have seemly plagiarized in order to write their books. Either they have lifted paragraphs or bylines, or they write things as life-stories when it should be fiction.
Why, I wonder do these writers compromise in such a manner? Why, if being a writer as been their dream for so long and usually it is for most of them, would they mess up like that? Do they think they would never be found out or that the readers out there are not smart enough to realize that they’ve read a line somewhere before and might actually seek out where they read it?
It certainly does make the author look bad and thus loses the trust of the reading public. It hurts the writer even more if what he/she wrote is supposed to be real-life experiences with which the readers will identify. As in the case of James Frey and his book “A Million Little Pieces”.
Writing is not exactly an easy thing to do for most people. There are times too, that trying to “put two words together” can be mind-numbing because you have writer’s block. I guess this is probably when some people will ‘borrow’ from someone else.
But could this be done innocently? Sometimes someone could be writing and they can’t really put into words what they‘re trying to say. After reading something else, they suddenly get inspired. Could this inspiration be the reason why some people will plagiarize? Then, instead of putting their own thoughts down on paper, they might end up re-writing that which inspired them? I don’t know. This is a whole debatable topic.
There’s now a new word used when someone plagiarizes another writer, it’s called “internalized” as in the case of this 19 year old who received a six figure book deal and was about to have her first book published only to have everything taken away because what she wrote, was so familiar to her classmates who after checking it out, was the same as an established author’s work.
According to her, the author whose work she ‘borrowed’ from is one of her favorite writers and she must have ‘internalized’ what she read and somehow put the same thoughts in her book.
It’s also reported in this link, Link that she’s not the only one who does this ‘internalizing’. It’s been done by many other writers, mostly college professors who never get penalized for what they do.
I think that anyone who does plagiarize should be penalized for doing so. We’re talking the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ of someone who worked hard to put together something that others will want to read. Perhaps it took that writer many a long nights to be inspired to put his/her work out there. Then, to have someone else copy it and gain monetarily from it without consequences? That would definitely drive me crazy!
I’m all for inspiring anyone who might get an idea from something I wrote. I’ve done that too, been inspired by someone else’s writing. However when you write exactly what the author as in their work, that’s where the inspiration ends and plagiarism begins.
So be careful what you write my fellow bloggers, checking your facts and noting references when necessary is always good too. Because even what we do here can be called into question if we ‘internalize’ someone else’s work.
Here is another link which tells about this latest uproar in the publishing world.
Link
Why, I wonder do these writers compromise in such a manner? Why, if being a writer as been their dream for so long and usually it is for most of them, would they mess up like that? Do they think they would never be found out or that the readers out there are not smart enough to realize that they’ve read a line somewhere before and might actually seek out where they read it?
It certainly does make the author look bad and thus loses the trust of the reading public. It hurts the writer even more if what he/she wrote is supposed to be real-life experiences with which the readers will identify. As in the case of James Frey and his book “A Million Little Pieces”.
Writing is not exactly an easy thing to do for most people. There are times too, that trying to “put two words together” can be mind-numbing because you have writer’s block. I guess this is probably when some people will ‘borrow’ from someone else.
But could this be done innocently? Sometimes someone could be writing and they can’t really put into words what they‘re trying to say. After reading something else, they suddenly get inspired. Could this inspiration be the reason why some people will plagiarize? Then, instead of putting their own thoughts down on paper, they might end up re-writing that which inspired them? I don’t know. This is a whole debatable topic.
There’s now a new word used when someone plagiarizes another writer, it’s called “internalized” as in the case of this 19 year old who received a six figure book deal and was about to have her first book published only to have everything taken away because what she wrote, was so familiar to her classmates who after checking it out, was the same as an established author’s work.
According to her, the author whose work she ‘borrowed’ from is one of her favorite writers and she must have ‘internalized’ what she read and somehow put the same thoughts in her book.
It’s also reported in this link, Link that she’s not the only one who does this ‘internalizing’. It’s been done by many other writers, mostly college professors who never get penalized for what they do.
I think that anyone who does plagiarize should be penalized for doing so. We’re talking the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ of someone who worked hard to put together something that others will want to read. Perhaps it took that writer many a long nights to be inspired to put his/her work out there. Then, to have someone else copy it and gain monetarily from it without consequences? That would definitely drive me crazy!
I’m all for inspiring anyone who might get an idea from something I wrote. I’ve done that too, been inspired by someone else’s writing. However when you write exactly what the author as in their work, that’s where the inspiration ends and plagiarism begins.
So be careful what you write my fellow bloggers, checking your facts and noting references when necessary is always good too. Because even what we do here can be called into question if we ‘internalize’ someone else’s work.
Here is another link which tells about this latest uproar in the publishing world.
Link
thank you! a lesson for the learning!