Nobody's Going to Steal Your Work

            Okay, this is a lie.  Sometimes.  I cannot promise you that no one will ever steal your ideas or your work; this is why we have copyrights and the Writer’s Guild of America.  HOWEVER the chances are so miniscule that you are wasting time if you’re worrying about it.  I was going to say the chances are minute but a certain percentage of people read that word as the increment of time that lasts 60 seconds, so I went with miniscule.

            The point is that, much as some of us think our ideas are worth zillions of dollars, most other writers have ideas of their own and are not much interested in yours.  I, for one, have files and files of ideas I will never get to in my lifetime, and the last thing I want to do is take someone else’s “baby” and try to make it my own.

            You can get paranoid and make a video of yourself putting your brilliant work into an envelope (zooming in on the cover page), licking the envelope, and dropping it into a mailbox next to a newspaper bearing today’s date for absolute proof, but seriously, do you think this video will someday become Exhibit A in a law suit?

            Here’s my advice if you simply cannot stop worrying.  First of all, obey the rules of the agents, publishing houses, and studios and don’t submit “through the transom” when they specifically say they will not accept unsolicited material.  They do this to protect themselves so that when they come out with a blockbuster story about a talking tree, you won’t accuse them of stealing your story about a talking tree.  Second, register your work with the appropriate agency.   And third, forget about it.  If you spend your time stewing, your brain will be bogged down and you won’t be creating new material.

            One of my professors in USC’s Professional Writing program said that a story of his had once been stolen, but that he couldn’t prove it.  He asked us students what we’d do in a case like that.  I raised my hand and said that if you’re really a writer you wouldn’t worry about it; you’d just move on, creating more material.  The thief is the one who should worry, because he obviously can’t generate his own ideas.

            My professor stared at me, then said, “I just spent thousands of dollars with a therapist who told me the same thing.” 

I shrugged.  “You should have called me; I’d have told you for free.”