PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND PLAGIARISM

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an author in possession of good ethics would never willingly employ the words or thoughts of another writer.

Except we do. A lot.

Take my opening statement – I did. It comes from Jane Austen’s classic novel, Pride and Prejudice. A quick glance at the Wikipedia entry for P&P lists more than 130 “literary adaptations” of the same story, most of them penned within the past decade. I can think of at least five additional novels in the young adult genre that didn’t make that list. One of them is The Geek Girl’s Guide to Cheerleading, the story I co-wrote with Charity Tahmaseb. Some of those books follow the plot path of Austen’s work more closely than ours but we all owe her more than a nod and a wink.

And that’s just one source of inspiration. If you like your reading on the fairy tale/fable side, you’re in luck. Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, each have been retold dozens of times. Romeo and Juliet? Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Ancient myths? Ditto.

Writers aren’t only influenced by authors long dead either. Does anyone really think it’s just coincidence that a plethora of vampire and werewolf novels hit the bookstore shelves soon after Stephanie Meyer’s ridiculously successful Twilight series took off? And – is there a literary agent alive who isn’t hoping one of the authors in her stable is currently tip, tap, typing out the chapters of the next Hunger Games?

Speaking of Hunger Games, many have asked this question: Is Suzanne Collins’ amazing trilogy nothing more than a warmed over Battle Royale? Ms. Collins says it is not, that she wasn’t influenced by the Koushun Takami novel at all. In several interviews she shares her true inspiration for the story: a mash up of the Survivor reality TV show, news footage from the war in Iraq, and the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.

I’m okay with finding inspiration wherever you can get it. And I’m in good company too; some pretty outstanding literary minds agree.

Noted writer and philosopher Joseph Campbell based his life’s work on the belief that there is truly only one story that we tell over and over again. It is often reported that poet and critic T.S. Elliot said, “Good writers imitate. Great writers steal.” When Mark Twain learned that Helen Keller was accused of borrowing content for her first short story, he sent a letter to her stating, “All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and put to daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them.” (LINK: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120511/03575518878/mark-twain-copyright-maximalist-who-also-believed-that-nearly-all-human-utterances-were-plagiarism.shtml )

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not in the camp that says, Plagiarism, eh, what’s the big deal? I think taking credit for someone else’s work is a very big deal. Plagiarism, when both commission and intention are clear, is shame-worthy and difficult to forgive. It’s also not always that easy to define.

Sometimes it is. Like in the case of Cassie Edwards, whose cut and paste lifting of passages from reference materials was outted by sharp romance reviewers Dear Author and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books in January, 2008. Or young phenom writers Kaavya Viswanathan and Helene Hegemann who’s proclaimed first novels were found to contain material borrowed nearly word for word — from young adult novels in Viswanathan’s case, and an anonymous blog in Hegemann’s. Or the super duper whopper of thievery, Q.R. Markham’s spy novel that included lines and passages from at least a dozen other tales – one of them six pages long!

Those are easy, but what about things like Fair Use, Common Knowledge, fan fiction?

Before she became a best selling novelist one young writer was widely read on internet sites that feature serialized stories based on the works of J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien. She was also once accused of plagiarism. But really, is it even possible to steal from a writer who is already borrowing the characters, setting and plot of another published author?

Then there are tropes, which the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines as: common or overused themes or devices. Where would the romance genre be without its secret baby stories? Or detective novels without private eyes whose personal lives are in disarray? If we banned all future use of the familiar: boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back, the world of YA Lit might implode in the vacuum. And yet, at one time, each of these was an original idea.

Remember T.S. Elliott? That ‘great writers steal’ guy? He was actually misquoted. What he really said was: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” But that’s just the sound bite. Here is the rest of what he said on the subject: “Bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn …”

No matter how well meaning we may be in defending the rights of original artists, when we rely on sound bites, offer only pithy condemnations, and pretend that plagiarism is always a simple matter of black or white, yes or no, we trivialize the subject and stifle discussion. That seems like a dangerous tactic in an age where many of those joining the ranks of authors and bloggers grew up with remixes, mash ups and memes.

Instead, maybe we should resolve to steal more. I suggest we start back with Jane Austen and her much beloved and often imitated classic. In it, her characters learn the folly of being too proud to admit they are capable of error, and too prejudiced to realize not every oops has an evil intention behind it. It is only when they loosen their death grip on what’s proper that they are able to right the wrongs of the past and affect the kind of permanent change that leads to happily ever after. Just sayin’.

Darcy Vance‘s essays on family life have appeared in regional newspapers and her first novel was a finalist in the Get Your Stiletto in the Door Contest. She is the co-author, with Charity Tahmaseb, of The Geek Girl’s Guide to Cheerleading, and lives in Indiana. Visit her at thegeekgirlsguide.com/wordpress.

My name is Karin Perry and I’m a school librarian. Well, I was until I took a job teaching in the library science department at a University. My first experience with plagiarism was in elementary school when I was assigned to do a report on John Paul Jones, the American Revolution Naval Officer. I remember, vividly, sitting at a desk in my grandpa’s spare bedroom and cracking open the “J/K” World Book Encyclopedia volume to copy the entry word for word. How did I think I was going to sneak that by my teacher? Of course, she was smart enough to see through my clever ruse and asked me to redo my report. But, she didn’t give me any instruction on HOW TO write the report “in my own words.”

Teachers and librarians have the responsibility to teach children about the ethical use of information. We need to teach students to respect Intellectual Property and the definition of plagiarism.  So, to make sure we are all on the same page, let’s take a look at exactly what those two terms mean.

Intellectual Property – property that results from original creative thought, as patents, copyright material, and trademarks.

Plagiarism – an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author’s work as one’s own, as by not crediting the original author.

It is important to point out to students that using the THOUGHTS of another person without giving proper credit is a violation because, many times, they think that it only counts as plagiarism if they copy word for word. One trick kids like to use to “get around” this issue is to switch out one or two words and call it good. They pull out the thesaurus and go to town.

So, how do we teach students to write in their own words? (Disclaimer: I admit I’m not an expert) I think the two most important parts to teaching this lesson are modeling and practice. Teachers need to show students what proper writing looks like and provide students with opportunities to write without the pressure of possible failure. Not everything the kids write needs to be graded, so in-class, frequent practice sessions would give students the confidence to do the right thing when they are on their own.

The technique I used with students is this:

1. Read a passage from an expository text.
2. Close the book/turn over the paper (if it is a printed out or copied article).
3. Write down what you can remember (in complete sentences).
4. Compare the original passage and your writing.
5. Is it too close to the original?
6. If so, start the process again, but this time using your writing (this will help the student take another step away from the original while still keeping accurate information).
7. The final step is to include the correct parenthetical citation at the end of the completed passage (students need to include the citation because they are using someone else’s thoughts).
8. Be sure to teach students about the use of a Reference or Bibliography page.
9. NOTE FOR THE TEACHER: This process needs to be closely monitored to make sure the student maintains accuracy.

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Sometimes, I feel like the Queen of the Personal Motto. I live by The Five-Minute Rule, which means that whatever happens on the publishing side of my life – good or bad – I only give it five minutes of attention before returning to the really important thing: writing. When asked for advice from writers, I always say “The only person who can ever really take you out of the game is you”; I’ve said that so often, and with such positive results for others, I’m thinking of TMing it. And when it comes to reviews, I offer you “never explain, never complain.”

Well, never is a strong word. I may complain privately. And in a rare blue moon, I may send a gently worded email to a reviewer – not to complain about the review; never that – but rather to clarify something. But talking back to reviewers who negatively review your work, setting up a fake email account, getting your friends to take up pitchforks and torches to go after someone on GoodReads – none of these things end well. It’s not just that it’s potentially career-damaging, it’s that it involves spending too much time mired in negativity when…what am I supposed to be doing with my time again? Oh, right. Writing. I’m supposed to be writing.

The truth is, I’m never going to write a book that doesn’t have at least some detractors – no author is – and some of my books may have lots of detractors, but I’m grateful to those readers who love what I do, I’m grateful to those readers who find fault with what I do, I’m even grateful to the haters; the bottom line is, I am grateful to be read.

So, never explain, never complain, except…

There is one time, and only one, when a writer cannot stay silent, and that is if there is a charge of plagiarism. If you are guilty, you must publicly admit it. If you are not, you must fight the charge.

Four years ago, a blogger charged me with plagiarism concerning a book of mine that had been published two years prior, How Nancy Drew Saved My Life.

How Nancy Drew Saved My Life is an odd duck of a novel. I call it my contemporary comedic gothic. How many of those have you seen around lately? It’s about a twentysomething Manhattanite who accepts a job as nanny to the daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Iceland. I can’t honestly recommend that you go out and read it since – full disclosure here! – it’s probably the weakest of my published novels. How’s that for surprising honesty? Well, with 24 novels published, I have to regard one of them as my weakest. If you want to read the funniest comedy I’ve ever written, on the other hand, then the book you’re looking for is The Bro-Magnet; and if you want the best book I’ve ever written of any kind, hands down that would be the Victorian suspense novel The Twin’s
Daughter (currently a Kindle bestseller, with only Suzanne Collins, Veronica Roth and
Cassandra Clare ahead of it on the bestseller list; and at $1.99, a steal!).

But I digress. Also, I sales pitch. So sue me.

And back to our story.

Having been alerted that there was a new review of How Nancy yadda-yadda, I eagerly checked it out. Some writers will tell you they never read their reviews, but I’m not like that; I read all of mine. The good ones make me feel good. And the bad ones? Sure, sometimes they sting, and I can’t do anything to change the book in question, but every now and then I do learn something that will hopefully have a positive effect on the writer I become in the future. When I got to the review, however, it wasn’t a review at all. It was one blogger, denouncing me as a copying thief and saying that I blatantly stole my material from Jane Eyre. I’m going to call this blogger Blogger 1 because I don’t want to engage in finger-pointing over a four-year-old offense. Blogger 1 had been inspired to attack based on having read Blogger 2’s review which accused me of being a thief.

Now let’s back up for a minute.

When I originally described How blah-blah here, I left out part of what I usually use to describe it because I wanted you to see the accusation first. How, I tell people, in addition to being a peculiar comedic gothic, is one part Chick Lit, one part Nancy Drew, and one part Jane Eyre. That’s right, I actually tell people what I’m doing. The main character actually says to the reader that she feels like she’s living Jane Eyre’s life. How can it be stealing, how can it be plagiarism, which by definition involves an intention to deceive, when at every turn I and the character tell the reader what I’m doing?

The truth is, it’s not plagiarism. It may not be a good book, but it’s not plagiarism. It’s a
re-visioning, which is a perfectly legal and time-honored thing to do.

Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fictionand the National Book Critics Circle Award? A re-visioning of Shakespeare’s King Lear, updated to the 1970s and set on an American farm in the Midwest. The Great Gatsby? It’s been re-visioned so many times, it’s hard to know where to start, from Nelson DeMille’s Gold Coast (with a John Gotti character as Gatsby) to Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s Z: A Novel (with a window washer who may or may not be Zorro as Gatsby). I could go on. But I won’t.

Instead, I’ll simply say that I contacted Blogger 1 and explained much of what I said above, about re-visioning etc, adding that if Blogger 2 didn’t even notice the similarities until halfway through, then she couldn’t be much of a JE scholar since the pattern is set from the start, with me doing everything short of opening the novel with the infamous red room! And what did Blogger 1 do? After admitting to never having actually read the book herself – !!! – she apologized and then she issued a retraction. I was satisfied and went back to writing.

So why did I make the effort when normally I never explain and never complain? Why, this time, did I do both? Because unless the charge is true, no author can afford to let a charge of plagiarism stand. On the Internet, that kind of thing spreads like wildfire and before you know it, it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not because the stain to your reputation has already been rendered indelible.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

And now it’s time for me to get back to writing.

Lauren Baratz-Logsted is the author of 24 books for adults, teens and children. You can
read more about her life and work at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com.

There’s not much that can get my blood boiling quite like discovering that something of mine has been plagiarized. I know because it’s happened to me multiple times over the years, and every time I find out, I’m filled with a red hot rage that takes me a long time to get under control. I sort of “Hulk” out, if you will.

You see, plagiarizing is basically stealing. It’s stealing my words, my thoughts, my ideas – and passing them off as your own. It’s taking credit for my work. And it really hurts when it happens.

In one recent case, I discovered a book review of mine had been copied and pasted word for word on another blog … which consisted entirely of book reviews that had been copied and pasted entirely from various other websites. What puzzled me the most about this instance was this: if you don’t want to write your own book reviews, why start a book review website at all?

Several years ago, I used to write fan fiction and also discovered that several of my stories had been copied from one site and reposted on another under someone else’s pen name. I raged, and made furious comments on the thief’s posts and submitted requests to the site to have the stories removed. (They were, eventually). But the damage had been done. Someone else was getting the credit for my words.

There’s one thing I’ve learned from all of these horrible experiences, however: for the most part, bloggers are good people. Why? Because other bloggers are the ones who told me about these cases of plagiarism in the first place. It was a kindly email, or a quick message on Twitter, that alerted me to an obscure post that had stolen my content. In one case, an author herself emailed me after reading my review of her book on another website. (Thanks, Sonia Gensler! Her book The Revenant truly rocks.)

Since Kristi has given me the opportunity to share my experiences with plagiarism on The Story Siren, I also want to take a moment to stand up in her defense. She didn’t ask me to say anything, and I don’t know if she’ll even keep this part of my post when she edits my guest blog. But here’s the thing: I’ve been the victim of plagiarism. I’ve experienced the hurt and the pain and the anger associated with it. And I’ve also experienced the frustration of knowing that the person who plagiarized me really has NO idea that they did anything wrong. I know how frustrating it is to send an email, requesting that my stolen content be removed from their site – and never hearing anything back. Never seeing a note of apology or anything. These are blatant cases of my own work being ripped off.

Kristi is a really good blogger. She set the bar pretty high with The Story Siren, and I respect all the work she’s done and continues to do for the YA blogging community. Kristi is also human, and she makes mistakes. We all do. She owned up to her mistake and made amends. The amount of hate and gossip I saw following her mistake really saddened me, however: to see people turning on a really great member of our community, becoming so vicious and hateful over an honest mistake (one she openly admitted to) – while other bloggers are out there blatantly and unapologetically plagiarizing on a regular basis without any kind of backlash.

By putting the spotlight on this issue, Kristi is continuing to serve the YA blogging community by educating everyone (including herself and me, too) about what plagiarism entails, why it’s hurtful, and why we should do whatever we can to stop it.

So here’s my advice: if you see plagiarism somewhere, speak up. Tell the author of the work. And then tell the person who’s doing the plagiarizing why it’s wrong. Stand up and speak out. But when you do so, be polite. There’s no need to be hateful. Plagiarism itself is already hateful enough.

Sara has a Bachelor of Arts in English from Portland State University. After working in the TV news business for several years, Sara joined her dad working in the family business as a distributor of printing and promotional products. Having a been an avid reader since childhood, Sara loves encouraging a love of reading amongst others — which helped inspire her to launch Novel Novice in January 2010! Sara also writes for Examiner.com as the Hunger Games Examiner and Beautiful Creatures Examiner. She is also the Young Adult/Children’s Author Coordinator for Portland’s Wordstock Festival. Sara has always loved getting lost in a good book, and is known for chronically staying up too late reading.

Truth: Not citing your sources after paraphrasing or using direct quotes (with or without quotations) is plagiarism.

Truth: For the most part (the exception are a few rare cases), I don’t believe students plagiarize on purpose.

Truth: I have failed students for plagiarizing.

In the classroom setting after me harping teaching for hours on end about in-text citations, work cited pages, paraphrasing versus direct quotes versus common knowledge, and, not to mention, the entire class period we devote to plagiarism, students have no excuse for not understanding the definition. But plagiarism still happens.

This year with our research paper I had to give six students (out of my 84) 0/200 for plagiarism. It is unfortunate for me because I know that it was a mistake on all six “for instances” and that it was not done purposefully. A few students gave me in-text citations but didn’t complete a works cited page.  Some students gave me a poorly assembled (awful interpretation) of a works cited page but failed to cite their sources. And one or two students gave me nothing but “their thoughts” – which were ironically ripe with statistics and research. I don’t think any of these students, regardless of their academic faux pas, meant to plagiarise. I think they were rushed and perhaps forgot about the ever-so important zero tolerance for academic plagiarism.

But I had to give them zeros. They are sophomores. This is not their first rodeo. They’ve been told about plagiarism in depth not only in my class but for several years! They should know better. Mistakes like this can’t be made.  I “threatened” the students that if they didn’t have works cited pages (that we completed in class) or did not include citation tags that they would receive a zero and I feel that it is important to stick to that policy.

The truth is this is a topic that can’t be ignored or pushed under the rug – in academics or professional blogging. To describe those whose ideas and words were stolen (via The Story Siren or any number of students), I think victim is the perfect word. They have been robbed. They deserve apologies. While I don’t know if anything could be said to make the situation right (for the victims and the readers), I hope that if there was something to be said that it is said so we can put this black spot of plagiarism behind us and focus on the actual discussion – which is the point of this post and essentially what I think Kristi is trying to do.

After everything that “went down” here a month ago I found myself addressing with my students, not the definition of plagiarism, but the implications of plagiarism and the feeling of theft that accompanies those who have been plagiarized. After presenting to my students a generic scenario where some random person took another random person’s idea and passed it off as their own, many students were outraged. They couldn’t believe in a “real life” example that someone would plagiarize. One student wrote this on his or her response:

“Stealing is wrong. It’s black and white. Even if you didn’t mean to do it, it’s wrong.”

After collecting their first responses, I further manipulated the analogy to say: “Okay, you took someone’s words and/or ideas and said they were yours. You plagiarized. Defend yourself.” A lot of students were stumped. Many said, “But we would never!” To that, I again pointed out that each year I have a few students who leave out works cited pages or in-text citations or (gasp!) even both. That is essentially plagiarism. Plagiarism being committed by students in our classes, our schools – not in some meaningless analogy or across the plains in urban cities.

At this point in the class, after saying “plagiarism” so many times my mouth formed the word on its own, a student presented the following scenario to me: “So I took someone’s words as my own. Say I’m in college, what would happen to me?” Utilizing my own graduate course syllabus, I pointed out that most academic institutions have a zero tolerance policy. Plagiarism generally results with a zero for the paper and, depending on the level of the class, possibly taking the course over (and paying for it twice). We talked a great deal about how hard it would be to earn back your peer and colleague’s trust again – but we, as a class, decided it was possible.

After this, another brave soul student asked me what would happen in a professional setting. I honestly didn’t know the answer to this question and I’ve found different scenarios that I’ve since shared with my classes. Depending on the profession, professionals may be fined, put on a leave of absence, or even in rare instances fired. But we, as a class, decided that the worst punishment for any professional would be the humiliation and the responses, again, from colleagues and peers. From the look in my students’ eyes, I doubt any of them will forget works cited pages next year as Juniors. One student wrote this on his or her final response:

“If I plagiarized I would say I’m sorry and make sure it didn’t happen again. But I wouldn’t let it ruin me.”

It was a learning moment for my students that I will never forget. A learning moment I’ll remember to teach each year.

Truth: Plagiarism is wrong.

Truth: I do not enjoy giving students zeros.

Truth: I do believe students (and people) deserve second chances.

Truth: None of my seniors forgot in-text citations or works cited pages this year.

Conclusion: People learn from their mistakes and move on.

Miss Remmers is 24 years old and an educator. She currently teaches English 10 and 12 in Bismarck, ND. Miss Remmers is working on her masters in Library Information and Media Technology and will graduate in December 2013.

More posts from this series:

• Let’s Talk about Plagiarism
• Let’s Talk about Plagiarism with Sarah Cross

I know that when I was a kid, when it came time to write research papers for school, my teachers would tell us to read a bunch of books on the topic, and then “put the information into your own words.” So for years, I thought that writing a paper meant “paraphrase someone else’s ideas, or a bunch of people’s ideas.” I thought that as long as I changed the wording, it was okay. I know now that that’s not the case, but I wonder how many people still think that approach is not plagiarism. Because it is.

Plagiarism doesn’t just mean copying someone’s exact words and passing them off as your own. Copying another person’s ideas counts, too.

The Little Mermaid © Disney

LEAVE THE VOICE-THEFT TO URSULA

My writing hasn’t been plagiarized–not that I know of, anyway. But there was a time when someone used a phrase from one of my books in a blog post–not as an excerpt, but as if it was their own wording. It was a weird phrase; no one would put those particular words together by accident. I figured the person had probably read my book, absorbed that wording, and then forgotten where it had come from. It was just a phrase, sometimes that happens, and it wasn’t a big deal.

BUT … I felt like someone had stolen my voice. Those were my words, and someone else was using them. It was a really creepy feeling.

When you plagiarize, and you steal someone’s words or ideas, you’re not only doing yourself a disservice, you’re erasing the creator’s contribution. When we put things out into the world–a story, an article, a piece of art–it’s because we have something to say and we want to be heard. If you’re speaking with someone else’s voice, not only is YOUR voice not being heard (which hurts you, in the long run), you’re preventing that person from connecting with their audience.

If you want to share someone else’s ideas, do it right. Link to that person’s post, or their website, or their tumblr–wherever you found the thing you want to share. Give credit.

And speaking of credit …

ARTISTS ARE PEOPLE, TOO

Words are not the only things on the internet that require credit. I think it’s easy to view photography, illustration, etc. as decoration, especially with sites like tumblr, Pinterest, and weheartit making it so easy to share images that you find online. And I know that a lot of people think that adding a line like “copyright belongs to whoever made this” or “I don’t own any of these pictures” is sufficient, because so long as you’re not claiming ownership, your use of that art is harmless.

It’s not.

The artist deserves credit. If they’ve posted their work online, chances are they’re trying to build an audience for that work. So if you like what they’ve done, why not help them out and include their name and a link to their website or deviantART, flickr, blog, etc.?

If the picture was uncredited when you found it, you can still figure out who the artist is, since Google allows you to search by image. You can upload the picture, or paste the image URL directly into the search box, and Google will show you where else on the internet that picture appears. You might not always be able to identify the artist that way, but there’s no excuse not to try.

IN CLOSING: GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

The most hurtful thing about plagiarism is that when you steal someone’s work, you ignore their contribution and you erase them. When you use art without credit, you erase the artist from the picture. You’re saying that the work has so little value, the person who made it doesn’t warrant acknowledgment. And that’s not the way anyone wants their work to be treated.

From the Official Author Site of Sarah Cross: 

Sarah Cross is the author of the fairy tale novel Kill Me Softly, the superhero novel Dull Boy, and the Wolverine comic “The Adamantium Diaries.” She loves fairy tales, lowbrow art, secret identities, and silence.

If you want to know more about her, read one of her books. Her soul is in there somewhere.

Current art inspirations & obsessions can be found at tumblr, Fairy Tale Mood, or pinterest

For more info on Sarah visit her website: www.sarahcross.com

Those are the last words I ever thought I would write when I started my blog in 2007. Plagiarism is despicable, it is cheating, it is stealing. I would never do that. And yet I have.

How did it happen? I’m not really sure I realized I’d crossed the line I’d been so adamant against, but I did. I suppose it happened because there was something I wanted to say, and I couldn’t find the right words to say it. I was asked a question about a blogging topic and went in search of inspiration. I came across a couple of posts that seemed like I could have written them myself — they expressed exactly what I wanted to, in the way that I wanted to. I wanted to make it relevant to book bloggers. I knew I couldn’t use their words — not exactly as written — so I added words of my own and subtracted a few of theirs. In my mind, I had done enough to make it mine; it was my voice. But I was wrong. I screwed up.

And I screwed up even more when they called me on it. I tried to deny it, because I didn’t want to believe it myself. I tried to keep it private, because I didn’t want to be judged. But when it all came out anyway, that just made everything seem even more deceitful. I should have admitted I was wrong right away. But I didn’t.

Now it is up to me to fix it.

I wasn’t sure how to do that. Then an author contacted me and suggested I look at this as an opportunity. She said, “A lot of young people, bloggers and writers read your blog, and all of them have probably walked that plagiarism line at least once, whether they are willing to admit it or not. We all like to think plagiarism is black or white, this or that. But the truth is, it can be tricky. When you are a student who is assigned to regurgitate someone else’s thoughts and opinions in a paper, or a blogger trying to explain why you liked or didn’t like the same book that a hundred other bloggers are also writing about, or if you are a writer chasing the latest trend in publishing … it’s not that easy to come up with something that is the same — but different.” She asked me to consider hosting a discussion about plagiarism, to help all of us figure out what it is, why it’s wrong, and how we can all avoid doing it in the future. One of the things I’ve learned from this experience is that I didn’t really know what plagiarism was. I want to educate myself and anyone else who is interested.

I was afraid to do it at first. I’m still afraid. Calling even more attention to myself right now is probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. But I have a duty to make up for my mistakes and right my wrongs. Even if it hurts, that is what I intend to do.

So …

For the next week I want to talk about plagiarism. I’ve invited several people to share their experiences and expertise about plagiarism. And I invite all of you to chime in: readers, writers, bloggers, teachers, librarians, anyone who has something to say on the subject. Let’s get this thing straight once and for all.