Disclaimer: I myself would click away from this article if I saw it a year or two ago. You see, I used to be (and still am) a writer who fears the p-word so much, I am scared that being associated with a simple post about it, even reading it, will somehow bring upon me the curse of being plagiarized.
Turns out, I was afraid of it for a reason.
First of all,
let’s look it up, shall we?
p l a •
g i a
•
r i s m
the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.
Synonyms: copying, infringement of copyright, piracy, theft, stealing, poaching, appropriation.
As some of you might already know, if you have been following this blog, way more than a year ago, I published my entire Greek mythology fantasy retelling novel Salt for Airon Swoon Reads.
Swoon Reads is a website where authors publish their finished and fully edited manuscripts for a chance at publication by Macmillan without an agent. (That is an extremely short version of what this amazing site dodes, but if you are interested in more, you are welcome to chek them out.) I had the best of times there, met the most wonderful and talented authors, many of whom are my friends to this day.
H O W E V E R
Tragedy struck when a random person whom I didn’t know (and wasn’t registered on the site) saw it, liked it, and proceeded to steal my title and entire parts of the opening scenes.
I, of course, immediately took it down, and emailed the staff, but they couldn’t care less and pretended they could do nothing about it, although I sent them all the places where she had published my novel. I was completely let down and disappointed by their dismissal of the whole thing, because they keep reassuring everyone on their site, in multiple places, that they will do the “best they can” to protect our manuscripts, and that the files they upload aren’t downloadable.
In despair, I turned to the Swoon Reads community on twitter, and my friends there helped me so much with encouraging words, similar experiences (!) and words of sound advice.
I let that person who had stolen my work know I had seen it, and she deleted it, but I have blocked her since, because she tried to deny it and harass me, so I have no idea what she is doing with it. Of course, that’s not the point. I know she can’t write the same exact story as me, nor make it as awesome as I have (just saying-lol)
The point is this:
It’s real, and I am a victim of it.
Inspite of what other “authors” or “publishers” on this or any other site or platform may tell you, it is a thing. There are desperate, ruthless, unscrupulous or (best case senario) just plain stupid people out there who will post your art without credit, copy your ideas, steal your words.
This is the internet, after all.
There are tons of empty people roaming about, looking for souls to eat. I know this sounds overly dark, but it’s true. And by “empty” I mean people who don’t have ideas of their own, no creative spark, but crave the attention and personal rewards of other creators of original content they see online. They might be better at advertizing themselves or their stolen “stuff” than you (as we all have seen in the past, in cases of famous authors, artists, and even scientists) but they could never in a million years have created it. And that’s the crux of the matter.
I put Salt for Air in a drawer, never to see the light of day.
Why?
Well, for one because I felt violated. I was violated. My rights had been trampled upon and I no longer felt safe in that world I had created laboriously, because someone had invaded, stolen, and shattered it. My heart was broken for so long, I couldn’t even remember what it had felt like to write without a constant feeling of deep despair.
You see, that person didn’t just steal my story. She stole part of my soul with it, she sucked the joy out of my entire creative process. That’s what plagiarism is all about.
But there’s a second reason. A second fear, even greater. The what if fear.
The fear that’s constantly in front of our eyes, in the success of people we know have stolen ideas and passed them off as their own, and made entire fortunes out of it. I won’t add examples, but I’m sure you had at least one pop into your head as you were reading that sentence. (The first thing that popped into my head was the example of a “physicist” who is widely known as the “inventor of things” and the “father of things” when he stole EVERYTHING from other scientists, and nothing of his was original. Fellow-nerds will know who I’m talking about. And sadly, no, it’s not just one person. Also, I’m thinking of an “author” who has stolen every word and character he/she ever wrote. I’m sure you have your own examples in mind.)
So, as I said before, Salt for Air is mine. It will always be the story in my head, which turned into pages on my laptop and eventually printed pages in my hand. It will always be mermen and Greek mythology and sea monsters and salty kisses and tears in the rain and fanfic writers of an imagined book.
Right now I know that this person who stole parts of my story isn’t likely to become widely-known based just on what she plagiarized from me. (Although you never know.) But what if it happens again? What if that fear stops me from writing another word?
I struggled a lot with beginning to write again after that, especially when i saw how little the publishing industry cares for human rights or even just creative rights. Which is zero. I don’t mind, thankfully, I’m not part of that industry, but the fear is still there.
I started to write the Robin Hood WIP, although it was the worst time in my life to be undertaking such a huge task, because I wanted to get back into the joy of writing and creating new worlds. Robin Hood and his world have always made me feel safe and protected for some reason, and I craved the feeling of creating that story.
But Salt for Air remained a wound in my heart, an empty hole.
Now, a year or so later, I finally mustered up the courage, given to me largely by the lovely community of The Book Robin Hoods and their camaraderie and support, to share a tiny peek of SFA (here). The response both on the site, on my blog, facebook and instagram, blew me away.
People heard that story for the first time (of course) and wanted more. So I realized I was being stupid, holding myself and my story back because of some immoral person.
But not quite as stupid as I’d been before.
I’m wiser now. I know that this is a real threat to all of us authors out there, especially the indie ones, that don’t have a team of publishers behind us. But you know what? I’ll take my team of reader and writer friends any day over that people I emailed over at SR who didn’t give a damn about my problem (largely created due to lack of professionalism on their site) -I think the problem might be the incompetence of the specific staff member who responded to my emails with rudeness and indifference, but no matter how much I asked to be referred to someone else, they refused to reply. Still, I feel so much safer with my friends than I ever felt with those “professionals” who couldn’t bother to answer my emails. Wouldn’t you?
I fully realize that the truth is this: No one can protect you from plagiarism. No one can promise you that no matter what, people won’t steal or repost your ideas.
No one can guarantee you that others will behave in a decent, humane way.
So what do we do? Keep our ideas, our stories, our art, in the drawer forever? No. I understand that now. That would be even worse. Then we ourselves would be robbing ourselves of the joy of sharing our art with the world.
The answer is the exact opposite: Be brave.
Now that the worst has happened, I find myself strangely free, as I begin the tentative process of dusting off my copy of Salt for Air, and looking to publish it.
I find myself unafraid as I keep sharing intimate details of my process of writing my Robin Hood WIP in these diaries with all of you. I share my ideas more freely than before.
Why? Once more, Robin has the answer.
Robin Hood, who has lost everything a man can lose, fortune, home, name and decency, and is still fighting with all he’s got and being merry in the process.
Because once what you were afraid of has happened, there’s nothing to fear anymore. You just do what you have to do, and fake courage until you actually feel it.
Letting bad stuff defeat me was far worse than what that person did to me. I realize that now. It took me a year and more, but thankfully I did. Better late than never, right? Letting the immoral people win, that’s the worst that can happen. Not plagiarism. Fear is the worst thing that can happen to you and me, and we have to fight against that with all our strength.
Because the worst thing a plagiarist can do is steal your basic idea, but you still have that brain that created your idea, so you can create an even better one. But if you allow another’s crime to stop you (which is totally understandable) you will be the one who commits the bigger crime: giving up.
And you must never, ever give up.
Stay safe, copyright-protect everything, watermark if you possibly can, and double-lock your pdfs and ebooks. (That’s a figure of speech, I don’t know if double-lock exists for pdfs). People can still step on your heart, of course. So what do you do?
I can’t tell you what to do, how much to share, or when to stop in order to protect yourself. Educating yourself about plagiarism and crimes committed against you will certainly help, and this entire article is written with that as a given. Apart from that, I can only tell you what I’m going to to.
I am going to be fighting against what had been done to me and against me, by sharing the hell out of my book(s) and not letting anyone intimidate me.
I will continue to share excerpts of my story generously, because that’s the one basic thing that makes readers want to read my books: the teasers. I will not post entire chapters until a few months before publication, but I will not be shy or stringent with my ideas. I will let the whole world know (or at least the few people in it who are interested.) I will not sit in bed and cry all day (well, not any more.) I will accept that I have a right to feel awful about what happened to me, that it wasn’t something I deserved in any way, and move on.
I will publish my stolen story, because it’s not stolen, it’s mine. I will polish it up within an inch of its life, and send it to betas, and rework it again, and then I will not be afraid to put it out there, free chapters, promos, aesthetics and all. Full on.
It took me a bit of time, but I’m finally doing it. I’m stepping out there. Out of my comfort zone, but also out of my pain.
Story time because this was one of the most surreal experiences of my life and I need to talk about it
So when I was sixteen I worked in a Dairy Queen in a mall (which was as awful as it sounds) and during prom season we had people that’d walk around in prom attire to kill time before the dance started.
You also need to know that among those suits in boxes you can buy at Macy’s is a three-piece American flag suit. I’m not joking.
So imagine, if you will, six white guys who were fuck-you tall all walking around the mall in this exact suit and matching white cowboy hats. Hilarious in and of itself, my coworkers and I were all cackling.
BUT THEN
My mall also had these motorized animals you can ride, they were marketed towards kids but there’s no way they’re gonna say no to an adult willing to pay $14 to ride on an elephant for half an hour
So like ten minutes after we see them, all of them come
RIDING ALONG IN A FUCKING CONGA LINE
Just these six identical cowboys each on their own animal, each animal blaring it’s own rendition of B-I-N-G-O, and I basically nearly burst into tears.
I hope they went on to start their own boy band or something.
Women have more power and agency in Shakespeare’s comedies than in his tragedies, and usually there are more of them with more speaking time, so I’m pretty sure what Shakespeare’s saying is “men ruin everything” because everyone fucking dies when men are in charge but when women are in charge you get married and live happily ever after
I think you’re reading too far into things, kiddo. Take a break from your women’s studies major and get some fresh air.
Right. Well, I’m a historian, so allow me to elaborate.
One of the most important aspects of the Puritan/Protestant revolution (in the 1590’s in particular) was the foregrounding of marriage as the most appropriate way of life. It often comes as a surprise when people learn this, but Puritans took an absolutely positive view of sexuality within the context of marriage. Clergy were encouraged to lead by example and marry and have children, as opposed to Catholic clergy who prized virginity above all else.Through his comedies, Shakespeare was promoting this new way of life which had never been promoted before. The dogma, thanks to the church, had always been “durr hburr women are evil sex is bad celibacy is your ticket to salvation.” All that changed in Shakespeare’s time, and thanks to him we get a view of the world where marriage, women, and sexuality are in fact the key to salvation.
The difference between the structure of a comedy and a tragedy is that the former is cyclical, and the latter a downward curve. Comedies weren’t stupid fun about the lighter side of life. The definition of a comedy was not a funny play. They were plays that began in turmoil and ended in reconciliation and renewal. They showed the audience the path to salvation, with the comic ending of a happy marriage leaving the promise of societal regeneration intact. Meanwhile, in the tragedies, there is no such promise of regeneration or salvation. The characters destroy themselves. The world in which they live is not sustainable. It leads to a dead end, with no promise of new life.
And so, in comedies, the women are the movers and shakers. They get things done. They move the machinery of the plot along. In tragedies, though women have an important part to play, they are often morally bankrupt as compared to the women of comedies, or if they are morally sound, they are disenfranchised and ignored, and refused the chance to contribute to the society in which they live. Let’s look at some examples.
In Romeo and Juliet, the play ends in tragedy because no-one listens to Juliet. Her father and Paris both insist they know what’s right for her, and they refuse to listen to her pleas for clemency. Juliet begs them – screams, cries, manipulates, tells them outright I cannot marry, just wait a week before you make me marry Paris, just a week, please and they ignore her, and force her into increasingly desperate straits, until at last the two young lovers kill themselves. The message? This violent, hate-filled patriarchal world is unsustainable. The promise of regeneration is cut down with the deaths of these children. Compare to Othello. This is the most horrifying and intimate tragedy of all, with the climax taking place in a bedroom as a husband smothers his young wife. The tragedy here could easily have been averted if Othello had listened to Desdemona and Emilia instead of Iago. The message? This society, built on racism and misogyny and martial, masculine honour, is unsustainable, and cannot regenerate itself. The very horror of it lies in the murder of two wives.
How about Hamlet? Ophelia is a disempowered character, but if Hamlet had listened to her, and not mistreated her, and if her father hadn’t controlled every aspect of her life, then perhaps she wouldn’t have committed suicide. The final scene of carnage is prompted by Laertes and Hamlet furiously grappling over her corpse. When Ophelia dies, any chance of reconciliation dies with her. The world collapses in on itself. This society is unsustainable. King Lear – we all know that this is prompted by Cordelia’s silence, her unwillingness to bend the knee and flatter in the face of tyranny. It is Lear’s disproportionate response to this that sets off the tragedy, and we get a play that is about entropy, aging and the destruction of the social order.
There are exceptions to the rule. I’m sure a lot of you are crying out “but Lady Macbeth!” and it’s a good point. However, in terms of raw power, neither Lady Macbeth nor the witches are as powerful as they appear. The only power they possess is the ability to influence Macbeth; but ultimately it is Macbeth’s own ambition that prompts him to murder Duncan, and it is he who escalates the situation while Lady Macbeth suffers a breakdown. In this case you have women who are allowed to influence the play, but do so for the worse; they fail to be the good moral compasses needed. Goneril, Regan and Gertrude are similarly comparable; they possess a measure of power, but do not use it for good, and again society cannot renew itself.
Now we come to the comedies, where women do have the most control over the plot. The most powerful example is Rosalind in As You Like It. She pulls the strings in every avenue of the plot, and it is thanks to her control that reconciliation is achieved at the end, and all end up happily married. Much Ado About Nothing pivots around a woman’s anger over the abuse of her innocent cousin. If the men were left in charge in this play, no-one would be married at the end, and it would certainly end in tragedy. But Beatrice stands up and rails against men for their cruel conduct towards women and says that famous, spine-tingling line – oh God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace. And Benedick, her suitor, listens to her. He realises that his misogynistic view of the world is wrong and he takes steps to change it. He challenges his male friends for their conduct, parts company with the prince, and by doing this he wins his lady’s hand. The entire happy ending is dependent on the men realising that they must trust, love and respect women. Now it is a society that is worthy of being perpetuated. Regeneration and salvation lies in equality between the sexes and the love husbands and wives cherish for each other. The Merry Wives of Windsor – here we have men learning to trust and respect their wives, Flastaff learning his lesson for trying to seduce married women, and a daughter tricking everyone so she can marry the man she truly loves. A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The turmoil begins because three men are trying to force Hermia to marry someone she does not love, and Helena has been cruelly mistreated. At the end, happiness and harmony comes when the women are allowed to marry the men of their choosing, and it is these marriages that are blessed by the fairies.
What of the romances? In The Tempest, Prospero holds the power, but it is Miranda who is the key to salvation and a happy ending. Without his daughter, it is likely Prospero would have turned into a murderous revenger. The Winter’s Tale sees Leontes destroy himself through his own jealousy. The king becomes a vicious tyrant because he is cruel to his own wife and children, and this breach of faith in suspecting his wife of adultery almost brings ruin to his entire kingdom. Only by obeying the sensible Emilia does Leontes have a chance of achieving redemption, and the pure trust and love that exists between Perdita and Florizel redeems the mistakes of the old generation and leads to a happy ending. Cymbeline? Imogen is wronged, and it is through her love and forgiveness that redemption is achieved at the end. In all of these plays, without the influence of the women there is no happy ending.
The message is clear. Without a woman’s consent and co-operation in living together and bringing up a family, there is turmoil. Equality between the sexes and trust between husbands and wives alone will bring happiness and harmony, not only to the family unit, but to society as a whole. The Taming of the Shrew rears its ugly head as a counter-example, for here a happy ending is dependent on a woman’s absolute subservience and obedience even in the face of abuse. But this is one of Shakespeare’s early plays (and a rip-off of an older comedy called The Taming of a Shrew) and it is interesting to look at how the reception of this play changed as values evolved in this society.
As early as 1611 The Shrew was adapted by the writer John Fletcher in a play called The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed. It is both a sequel and an imitation, and it chronicles Petruchio’s search for a second wife after his disastrous marriage with Katherine (whose taming had been temporary) ended with her death. In Fletcher’s version, the men are outfoxed by the women and Petruchio is ‘tamed’ by his new wife. It ends with a rather uplifting epilogue that claims the play aimed:
To teach both sexes due equality
And as they stand bound, to love mutually.
The Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed were staged back to back in 1633, and it was recorded that although Shakespeare’s Shrew was “liked”, Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed was “very well liked.” You heard it here folks; as early as 1633 audiences found Shakespeare’s message of total female submission uncomfortable, and they preferred John Fletcher’s interpretation and his message of equality between the sexes.
So yes. The message we can take away from Shakespeare is that a world in which women are powerless and cannot or do not contribute positively to society and family is unsustainable. Men, given the power and left to their own devices, will destroy themselves. But if men and women can work together and live in harmony, then the whole community has a chance at salvation, renewal and happiness.
In the immortal words of the bard himself: fucking annihilated.
instead of reporting the murder, i would like to help you bury thE BODY CAUSE DAAMN
hey remember when jane austen, a woman, referred to a character named richard as having “never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name” in 1817. yeah me too.
getting food poisoning is a sick irony. sandwich, you were supposed to nourish my fragile meat body, not conspire with one section of it to kill the rest. you edible brutus, you fredo, you fucking intestinal quisling
this post shows true literary prowess but i wish i hadn’t read it while finishing my sandwich
Steel Phoenix Studios 