Reading a post over (yes…again…) @ Dear Author on the issue of plagiarism in general, I was thinking about creativity. Why it should count for something and why it should be respected. Apparently, Jane’s been receiving emails regarding the issue of plagiarism, that it is a crime that doesn’t really hurt anybody.

FYI… this is not about CE. This is about plagiarism. This is about the idea that some people don’t think the issue is worth discussing. People who think plagiarism is a crime that hurts only the plagiarist.

In my mind, that’ a bad way to think. Not caring about plagiarism reflects badly on a particular genre as a whole.

• Ethics

A writer’s work, whether it’s a piece about black-footed ferrets or a sweeping Civil War saga or a romance about vamps and werewolves having kinky sex, that work is important to that writer. It’s a creation…the writer’s own creation. Just like a painting is a creation of an artist. Like a photograph is the creation of the photographer.

Taking somebody else’s words and not crediting the source isn’t really any different than copying an artist’s portrait and trying to sell it as your own. It’s no different than if a little-known photographer took a picture of Thunderbird Falls in Alaska and then some huge name wild-life photographer decided to include that picture in his work, claim it as his own and never acknowledge the man who actually took the picture. To benefit in any way from the work of another and not credit that work is unethical. It’s irresponsible.

• Respect

Creativity should count for something~it should be respected.

Any matter of writing, whether it’s biographical works, academic works, or fiction written purely for enjoyment is a creative work. As dry and dull as some textbooks are, it takes a creative mind to craft them, to hone them, to research them.

In my mind, it doesn’t matter if the work is fiction or non-fiction. To say that since it’s non-fiction, it doesn’t matter implies that whoever crafted that piece of non-fiction doesn’t matter. Their time doesn’t matter. Their work doesn’t matter.

I can sit here in my chair and dream up an idea, research it, explore it, craft it, hone it… all hard work. But I can generally put together a full length book, including research in under three months. Sometimes less. I’ve written novellas in two weeks, category length books in 6-8 weeks. All including research.

But non-fiction? There are pieces of non-fiction out there that take a writer years to complete. Just one piece can take years and years of research.

Most non-fiction works have to be factual. It’s what makes them non-fiction. Being non-fiction means research. Lots and lots of research. Not just checking out a source or two or three, not just visiting a place for a week…it means reading every piece of information available and some of those pieces, especially if it’s a historical bit, are falling-apart documents from centuries ago.

Can you imagine the eyestrain required to research some centuries-old technique used for delivering a child? Baking a pie? Building a monument?

Somebody writing a book on the history of medicine in America would probably have spent years compiling the data. That person would deserve credit if somebody went and cited their research. But you can’t say… well, okay, if it’s a big book, I’ll credit it.. but not a short little article.

• Double standards are unfair

Let me ask you this… if a non-fiction writer decided to put together a book on the appeal of romance books and took information from these books, a book you wrote, but didn’t credit you in any way…even to say this piece of crap was written by a clueless author Shiloh Walker, would you be upset?

I would.

How can romance writers complain that they don’t get respect outside the genre if we, as a genre, don’t show respect to those outside romance? How can we expect the lit writers and the non-fiction writers and the journalists to respects us as writers, when we have those among us who don’t care if somebody plagiarizes a piece of boring non-fiction?

We can’t. It’s that plain. It’s that simple. If you want anybody to take you seriously as a writer, then you have to take other writers seriously…and treat them the respect you’d want from them. We can’t say it’s okay to ‘lift’ from non-fiction but not from fiction. You can’t show respect if it’s considered okay to claim somebody else’s words as your own.

• Writing is hard work

Writing a romance requires dedication. So does non-fiction.

Writing a romance requires thought. So does non-fiction.

Writing a romance requires time. So does non-fiction.

Now… writing a romance doesn’t necessarily include research. But most non-fiction does. Writing a romance doesn’t have to include citing sources, facts, dates… (although by all means, if you use one source for a lot of research and material used in that book… acknowledge it!) But what goes into a non-fiction work does require sources. It requires facts.

• Turn it around

Those who are claiming that only the plagiarist has been hurt, ask yourself how you would feel if you sold a book, worked hard, polished it, perfected it…and then sometime after the book was released, you were reading a book by another author and found entire passages of your book within that book? Would you not care? Would you not be angered?

If you can’t honestly say, I wouldn’t care and I wouldn’t be angry then you can’t logically and objectively say it doesn’t matter.

Writing, period, is hard work. Creative works are hard work.

It doesn’t matter if it’s fiction, if it’s non-fiction, if it’s something that falls in between. It’s hard work. If you copy data from a source and don’t cite that source, it’s a flagrant sign of disrespect.

And that is why it matters.