BillieJean
Member
I have a friend who's in a writing group. She shared some of her ideas with the group and low and behold, one of the members has written an article similar to hers. The "themes" are the same, but some of the other information is different. My friend was stunned.
What can writers do to protect themselves when they're in writing groups? How do you know that someone won't "rip off" your idea and pass it off as their own? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Great question. I would be cautious about sharing ideas right away with the group. I'll tell you my story which has to do with screenwriting, but it could apply to travel writing as well.
I shared my teleplay idea with my screenwriting group; it's been completed for a couple of weeks now. Lo and behold, a guy in my writing group wrote a teleplay that is very, and I mean very similar to my teleplay. You could take my teleplay and put it into his. All you would have to do is change the names, setting, etc... Needless to say, I'm speaking with a copyright lawyer because I'm serious about writing, and I want to protect myself. I want to know every nuance of copyright laws, especially when it comes to verbalizing your ideas or completed projects. It was a tough lesson for me to learn, but I leaned it. I will not share my ideas with any writing group again.
The writing groups I would look for are ones that offer writing exercises. Perhaps they analyze work that is already written. You could take a travel writing article and re-write it or discuss the structure of it. Any ideas you have, keep them to yourself or discuss them with the organizer if you trust him or her. Good luck!
Wow - I've been in a couple of writer's groups in the past (not for the past couple of years though - too busy) and I have never heard of that! But I can easily see it happening - times are tough for writers and earning opportunities are decreasing, so competition can be fierce. Still, it's very sad to hear that it's happening.
It's unfortunate, but it happens. I recommend getting to know people before you begin discussing your ideas.
TravGirl
Member
It happened to me once too. I was at a writer's conference and was telling a couple of other writers about an article I was working on.....well one of them wrote an article on the same topic (and not a common one either) and even submitted it to the same place I was planning to submit to! Their article was a different perspective than mine, but it was very clearly my idea, and man was I ever steamed about it!
I learned a lesson from that - now I don't discuss articles with other writers until AFTER they are submitted or published.
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