A Thief By Any Other Name…is Still a JERK!

For a number of reasons the internet is a wonderful tool for the use of artists of every kind. It allows us to network with our peers and our fans, to take the reins on our own marketing and distribution, to do various kinds of research, and a world of other useful things. It makes our lives and platforms easier to handle and, if we so choose, allows us to share ourselves and our work with the world on a scale of our own choosing.

But there are also pitfalls. One such pitfall that never ceases to destroy my trust in people is plagiarism.

Plagiarism is something I never honestly thought that I would have to worry about. When I was still in school the only kind of plagiarism you ever heard about was kids copying each others’ work or copying entire sections of their essays out of library books. Even as I moved on to the college world the most you really came across was when truly stupid students would copy sections of Wikipedia pages without realizing that Wikipedia is created by volunteer input and is therefore not necessarily correct in any way, shape, or form.

These days, however, I can give you a list of pieces that I have seen plagiarized on the internet. I have several artist friends who have found their drawings/paintings/etc posted on other peoples’ websites with no credit given to the original creator. I know a number of writers who only found out through the help of their readers that other people were snatching their work from sites like FanFiction.net and FictionPress.com and posting it on their own websites with their own names attached. I even know a few people who write for professional websites who have found their articles copy-and-pasted onto other people’s sites with the impression that it belonged to the thief. And just recently my father, who loves photography and regularly posts his photos on Facebook, was informed by a friend that other photographers were ganking his pictures and claiming them as their own. In most of these cases the original creators had no intention of making money from their work, which is why they were sharing it freely, but that does not give other people the right to steal that work and turn around and use it for their own purpose.

Maybe we should just all start attaching these to everything we do.

Some people may say that if the thief isn’t making any money off the stolen work, then what should it matter? And I’m here to tell you that it matters a lot. For one thing, if two people are claiming ownership of the same work, how do the fans know who to trust? If, for instance, someone stole one of my stories and posted it on their own site, how many readers might read it on that site first, and therefore assume that I am the thief? Now my name has been besmirched even though I am the victim. For another thing, you have to think about things like exposure and building a portfolio. Take my father for this example. He currently has no intentions of making any money from his hobby, but someday he might, and all the photos that he’s been taking and sharing with the world will be part of his portfolio. But if other people have been taking his photos and claiming them as their own, they will have been spending all this time building up their own portfolios with those stolen photos. They’ve been gaining all the ill-gotten exposure while my father has been simply enjoying his hobby, and if his intentions do change, he’ll be basically starting over from scratch because he’ll have no way to prove that those photos were truly his all along.

There are certain things that an artist can do to protect their work, such as watermarking photos and emailing manuscripts to yourself (so that the email server has a time stamp of how long that particular file has been in your possession), but action rarely stops plagiarizers. The internet is an enormous virtual Universe that is unfortunately filled with quite a large number of jerks, and in the many examples of plagiarism that I’ve seen, the only reason the victims even found out about their work being stolen was because fans found out and informed them of the outrage.

So with that said, I offer a suggestion to the masses: keep an eye out for one another. To my knowledge no work of mine has ever been plagiarized, but for all I know there could be a dozen other blogs out there posting my Final Fantasy novelization and claiming it as their own, and I would definitely want to be informed if someone happened to wander across such a thievery. I’m sure any one of you would want the same. So keep your eyes open, friends and fellow artists. We are a community and we have to have each others’ backs on this one. Don’t let the thieves win!

Things I Know About Kids: Pay Attention to What They Like!

Let me start off this post by asking a question: how many of you can recall at least one birthday, Christmas, or other present-giving holiday where you were disappointed by a present? Maybe you got the cheap knock-off version of the thing you really wanted, or maybe you got something that was way outside your age range, or maybe you got something completely different from what you’d asked for because what you really wanted was deemed somehow inappropriate. Or maybe, just maybe, you got something completely random that you didn’t want, and all you could think was, “Geez, does anyone even pay attention to what I like?”

Now here’s the thing. I’m not suggesting that kids shouldn’t be grateful for the presents they get, because they should, and it really peeves me when kids are ungrateful little brats. I’m also not suggesting that parents should break the bank when it comes to presents…if you genuinely can’t afford it, then your kids are just going to have to deal (and again, be grateful).

But I am saying this: for the love of god…pay attention to what your kids like.

I bring this up because of my “jobs I’ve had” post a few days ago. Mentioning my previous positions at various department stores reminded me of something I dealt with a lot while working retail: clueless parents. I can’t count the number of times I got questions from parents who had only the basest inkling of a concept of what their child wanted as a present. For example, once I had a mother come into Zellers and ask me for help finding a game that her kid wanted. She said the game was called “Mario”. I had to bite my tongue to keep from screaming as I asked her, “Which Mario?”

A SMALL clipping of the Wikipedia list of Mario games…notice the dates?

A brief discussion thereafter revealed that not only did the woman not know which one of the dozens of possible “Mario” games she was looking for, but she didn’t even know which video game console she was buying it for. She knew that her kid had a “Nintendo”, but not which version, and at the time N64 was still booming, while Gamecube was wracking up new sales. Each system had a plethora of “Mario” games, so I had absolutely no way of advising this woman as to what she should buy. In the end I practically begged her to go home and ask her kid about the game again.

Now seriously, folks…it’s one thing to get a little confused when you find out that there are multiple games with similar titles…but if you don’t even know which system you’re buying it for? Sorry, but you must have your head lodged firmly up your back-end. I know there are lots of parents out there who don’t know a damn thing about video games, but how can you honestly not even know which console(s) your kid owns? Is there really not enough space in your brain to commit the words “Gamecube” or “Playstation 3” or “Gameboy” or “XBox” to memory?

I don’t mean this post to torment parents who are a little out of touch with video games and toys and the newest gadgets. We can’t all know everything about everything. But this is your child (or children) that we’re talking about. Is it really so hard to pay a little bit of attention to what they enjoy? The toys they play with? The TV shows they watch? You have no idea how many times I watched parents struggle over a wall of action figures because they had no idea which superhero they were actually looking for, or how many times I’ve watched a parent pick up some random toy with a look of bewilderment on their face and ask me, “Do you think my kid will like this?”

You have no idea how many returns I’ve seen after a holiday, during which the parent grumbled that they’d, “Apparently got the wrong thing.”

Really, I swear, it’s not rocket science.

Yes, there are an outrageous number of options out there and sometimes it can be a little overwhelming, but you know what works? Ask your kid questions. If your kid is playing with a bunch of dolls, ask them what their names are and which ones they don’t have. BOOM, gift idea. Simple. Direct. Almost 100% success rate. Or you know what else works really well? When your kid asks for something specific, take ten seconds to really listen to what they said. The “Mario” game fiasco above could have been easily rectified if the mother had paid attention long enough to hear the full name of the game and, ideally, write it down so she wouldn’t forget. Bada bing, bada boom.

We can’t all be super-parents, and no parent has a 100% grasp on everything their kid is into…but that doesn’t give us an excuse to be ignorant. Your kids have as much right as anyone else in your life to have your attention long enough for you to be able to buy them nice presents without begging a bewildered sales clerk for help. It’s not difficult. It just takes a little bit of effort. Aren’t your kids worth a little bit of effort?

Shown: Something worth a little bit of effort.

iWrite

I’ve never been an Apple fangirl. I’ve always thought the Mac laptops were pretty and perhaps a little more suitable for artistic types, but the price tag always seemed a little insane to me. I mean, in the end, it’s just a computer. Different operating system, yes, maybe a bit different on the inside as well, but still just a computer.

That said, I am an iPhone junky. I can’t say I wouldn’t have been just as happy with an Android-based phone, because I’ve never spent enough time on one, but my husband got me an iPhone for this past Christmas and I absolutely love it. Some days I have a hard time convincing myself to put it down and do little things like eating and bathing.

So it was only a matter of time before I started searching for apps specifically designed for writers. In the past month or so I’ve read through dozens of lists created by fellow app-using writers and I’ve downloaded every free app I could find (I’m not cheap, I swear, I just find it hard to justify paying for an app before I can actually see if it’s going to be useful to me). I’ve downloaded everything from time-management apps, to apps meant to help keep track of manuscript submissions, to word processors (seriously? Are people seriously writing entire novels on their iPhone?). I’ve since deleted many of these apps as I found them either unhelpful, unintuitive, or just plain unlikable. But there are a few I’ve held on to and I thought I’d share them in case anyone is interested in using their own iPhone (or alternate smartphone, in the case of some of these apps) as a writing extension.

WriteChain
There isn’t much to this app, but it was one of the first ones I downloaded because the premise is very satisfying for a tracking junkie like me. Basically this app allows you to set your daily word count goal and submit your daily word counts. For each day that you succeed in your goal the program adds a link to your ‘chain’. It’s a self-motivation kind of thing. 🙂

Dragon Dictation
This app works on speech recognition software. You speak to it like you would to one of those handheld recorders, and it translates your speech into text, that can presumably then be copied and pasted to wherever you need it. I haven’t used it much yet, but I suspect it would be great for quickly putting an idea to ‘paper’ for later use.

Wikipanion
An app version of Wikipedia, excellent for spur-of-the-moment research. As with anything on Wikipedia though, you’ve got to take the info you find with a grain of salt!

SimpleMind+
I haven’t put this one to too much use yet since I’m at the final stages of the novel I’m working on, but I can definitely see it being useful in the future. This is a mind-mapping app that allows you to create little trees of info and link them together, building a little ‘map’ of information for future use in your story.

Daytum
Not specifically designed for writers, but useful just the same, Daytum basically allows you to keep track of…whatever. You give it a type of data to track, say ‘Words Written’, and if you so choose you can further categorize, say ‘Blogging’ or ‘Novel’, then input your count. I’m using it to keep track of my word count (as seen in my clever example). Whereas Writechain only counts words as one quantity, Daytum allows me to break it down into what those words were put toward, so I can see if I’m spending enough time on my novel as opposed to making constant blog entries. *cough*

So there you have it. Of the (at least) 30 or so apps I tried out, these are the ones who made the cut for me. Please feel free to share any apps that you’ve come across that are great tools for the iPhone junkie writer. I’d be happy to try out some more!!