A Reminder

Let me reiterate what every writer should know, regardless of age, gender or genre:

Plagiarism is bad!

You can make stuff up, summarise, expand, quote, but you cannot copy someone else's work:

Plagiarism is bad!

There is no excuse for copying. It is stealing, it is theft or any other word you'd like to pluck from the Thesaurus. It is wrong, it is making money from someone else's hard work.

What has prompted this reminder? This has.

It's a great thing that such a young author could command an advance of this size for a first book; it gives hope to others, to every struggling author out there. Yeah, sure, there's envy, and wishing; there are sneers and disappointment that it wasn't them, but the big advances are still out there if you have the talent.

It's destructive that the author has been exposed as a cheat, a liar and a thief. The author as allegedly said that the suspect passage had probably be written from her subconcious. I'm sorry, but writing this because it was so firmly set in the subconscious? I know people can have a near-photographic memory, but a photographic subconscious? I'm pretty sure Harvard is really, really pissed off about this, as is Dreamworks who bought the rights.

Plagiarism reflects badly on the writing world as a whole. I could wax lyrical about the ongoing and deliberate allowance of plagiarism at schools, but that would be lengthy indeed. This kind of thing needs to be punished severely; it should not be acceptable in any situation or school.

Unless those in authority return to integrity before money, unfortunately, this will continue.

For those who still believe in their own work, their own worth, we fight the good fight, regardless of those rejection letters, the bad reviews, the okay sales. We do this because we love the language and we want to share what we create.

One last time, people:

Plagiarism is bad!