Author, Historian, Storyteller

As a writer, I provide quite a bit of content on the web for free, mostly on my blog. It is content meant to entertain or spark a conversation or thought. I’ve never tried to sell it, nor do I make any money on it. It is meant to be read, enjoyed and shared with friends. However, I’ve started to notice a trend that I don’t think I can quite jump on board with. There are now programs out there that make it really easy to put together a virtual newsletter or newspaper, and people are making them left and right. However, some of them, instead of creating the content themselves, troll Twitter and the internet and pull other people’s work to fill the inches of their newsletter. I’ve noticed that my work is popping up in these more and more. When I saw the first one, I got a little bit of a thrill. I won’t lie, it was a nice ego stroke. But as it happened again, and again, and again the glamour of it wore off.

When someone shares a link on Facebook or retweets one of my pieces on Twitter, awesome! Thank you for sharing. When someone mentions one of my pieces in their blog piece, or even better provides a link to one of my pieces, awesome! Thank you for sharing. But at what point does it stop being sharing and become a re-appropriation of work? When somebody puts together and shares a newsletter that is composed entirely of other people’s work, is it still considered sharing? They call it their newsletter, but it’s my work, and the work of others, filling the space. I was never consulted nor asked if that was okay, I’m sure the other “contributors” weren’t either.

Even worse, I actually had a newspaper take one of my theater reviews and run it in their paper. I was given the byline so it wasn’t plagiarism, but you can bet your sweet ass that my editor was up in arms about it when I told him. The other newspaper was told that under no uncertain terms were they to ever run another one of my reviews unless they had specifically asked me to review for their paper. It never happened again. So what’s the difference? I write my blogs for my website. I write my articles for a specific magazine. I have never had any contract or agreement to write for a newsletter and yet I keep finding my work in them. So I’m left with the conundrum or whether I should be upset about this, or just appreciate the extra exposure.

Let’s face it, I’m not making millions of dollars off of my writing. Hell I’m not even making a living off of my writing. I provide my blog, free of charge for whoever wants to read it. So why does it stick in my craw every time I see my work in one of these newsletters? I think it’s because, unlike a retweet or share on Facebook, these people are trying to benefit off of my work. Whether they want to get thousands of twitter followers because of their newsletter, or the link goes back to a website where they sell ad space, they are getting personal gain by re-appropriating my work and they’re doing so without ever contacting me to ask permission. There’s the rub. But I don’t know if I’m being overly sensitive or pragmatic, or if this is something that bothers other people too. When does it go too far? When does sharing turn into an inappropriate re-appropriation of work? And the better question, what do we do about it?

What do you think? Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill, or do I have a legitimate beef?

As I have been sharing more and more of my work I have, of course, encountered more critical comments than before. Thankfully, the majority of these have come from a genuine “trying to help” place and not just someone being nasty because they can. I have however, seen something that I’d never noticed before. Every so often I will get a nay-sayer who will argue against an idea or piece so vehemently that it becomes obvious that their issue actually has very little to do with the idea/piece, but is actually to do with something in them that was triggered by the idea/piece.

That’s when I realized that I’ve seen this reaction before, outside of comments about my writing. For example, I was in college when I declared to my father that I wanted to spend all of my savings to do a summer-at-sea where I would learn about different cultures and places and visit a laundry list of countries. He was not a fan of this plan. He was a nay-sayer and came up with all sorts of reasons why I shouldn’t do it – like turmoil in certain countries. I was so confused, because this sounded like a great idea to me and an amazing opportunity. It was only after much debate that the truth of the matter came out. It wasn’t really the program, or the different locales that he objected to. He was afraid of the consequences of me emptying out my savings to do the trip. Had I not kept arguing with him, I never would have figured that out.

I think the truth of that holds for other situations as well, and now whenever I have someone who vociferously opposes or doesn’t like something, I stand back and I ask myself: Why are they a nay-sayer? Is this truly a bad idea, or is their opposition coming from somewhere else? Does their opposition have my best interests at heart, or is it coming from a place of fear, or jealousy, or somewhere else? Think about it. I actually think that the reason that some parents or families are a person’s biggest nay-sayers is because there is such a fear of what will happen if the person doesn’t succeed. They care so much that they say no and they dissuade in an attempt to keep us safe. Which is kind of backwards if you ask me, but I’ve always believed that to get what you truly want, you have to be willing to take risks. Some people don’t think that way. So who are your nay-sayers, and why are they saying nay?

I have always considered myself a master procrastinator. Especially when it comes to do doing things like working on my writing projects. Then I realized something. It’s not that I procrastinate working on them, it’s that I don’t have a deadline. I tend to go through life at Mach 5 with my hair on fire – at least that’s how my dad describes me. I am constantly doing something, if not 2-3 some things. Writing projects, home projects, organizational projects, art projects, I think some of my projects even have projects. I will never understand how people can be bored. I have so many things on my to-do list right now that I’m set to stay busy for months (not counting the additional tasks that I’ll come up with).

Therefore, when I come to a line on my to-do list that doesn’t have a deadline, it will often get bumped to the next day in lieu of something more immediate. Sadly, this is the category that my novel has fallen into for a very long time. Which also explains why it isn’t finished. So being the problem solver that I am, I have fixed the problem by giving myself deadlines in the form of a book club. Okay, I’ve been calling it book club, one of the participants more accurately described it as a literary salon. Basically I looked through my local friends and picked out a group of people that fit two criteria.

1. I respect their opinions.
2. They fall into my prime demographic.

Then I invited them over, gave them cheese and wine (it is a literary salon after all!) and we read a couple of chapters and then discussed. Three weeks later, we did it again with the next two chapters. To be honest, if this idea had done nothing but start a fire under my butt to finish my novel, I would have called it a success.  What I have gotten is so much more! Yes, it’s given me deadlines and that has definitely increased my productivity and kept my novel from perpetually dropping down the never-ending to-do list, but what I wasn’t expecting, and what has been absolutely invaluable, is listening to the conversations. With the exception of asking questions, I try to stay out of the discussion completely and simply listen and take notes. It’s fantastic. Someone will throw out a comment, and sometimes people will chime in agreeing, but even better is when people disagree. Listening to the different interpretations on the same text is fascinating. Especially when somebody is right along the same lines of my own thinking for the character or scene and defending their viewpoint using the same argument that I would have made. It’s amazing! And it’s also scary, hearing the direction that some people’s thoughts are going, and then wondering if I should change something to steer them in the right direction, or if I should trust in the story that is already down on the page to steer them to where they need to be.

I love it and it’s driving me nuts all at the same time, because I want to blurt out and answer their questions and explain where the story is going. But if I did that I wouldn’t get to see the realizations and discoveries, so I’m keeping my mouth shut. Despite the fact that we’ve only met twice, I can honestly say that I don’t think I will ever produce a product like this again, without taking the time and effort to read it aloud with a group. The dynamic and the feedback are so much better than if I had asked each person to read the book individually and provide comments when they were done.

The funny thing is that I don’t think I would have been able to do something like this when I was younger. I don’t think I had the self-confidence to sit in a room and watch people as they hear my words for the first time and then discuss them. Especially since they are all well aware that my goal is to improve the text, so they’re looking at it with a critical eye. That being said, I really wish that I could go back and tell the younger me, to get over myself, suck it up and to start sharing my work as soon as possible. Writing is definitely a solitary pursuit, but for it to be good it has to be shared and critiqued. I’m really coming to realize that that is the only way to truly improve. I am also coming to realize, that when you get to pick the people you share it with, it’s not nearly as scary as you think it will be.