I am the first to admit that I am not as original as I once thought I was. Every clever idea I have come up with in the past decade, the first person I excitedly share it with says something along the lines of, “Oh yeah, I saw that on Pinterest.” What? Really? Before the age of social media, I honestly thought I had completely unique ideas. Now, I know that most things that are thought up have been thought of before. When you consider the fact that there are billions of people in the world, it makes sense that multitudes could organically and independently come up with similar ideas.
This is as true in writing as anything else. At first, I would be disheartened and discouraged when I saw a story on the same topic as one I had just written. Now, I recognize that even though a subject or topic might be the same, what makes each piece unique is the writer — their experiences, perspective, and voice are unlike any other’s.
I have come to not only accept but also expect that any topic I feel compelled to write about has surely been written about before and will definitely be written about again. And I have come to realize that there is nothing wrong with that.
It is one thing, however, to write on the same topic or share a similar story with another writer, it is completely another to flat out steal someone else’s work. Over the past few weeks, time and time again, I’ve been left shaking my head in dismay over some very troubling trends in this area.
