You know?  I'm just some rinky-dink little writer, starting out on the beginning of my career.  Blogging, knocking out short stories, sending out queries for articles (and being ignored).  Who am I?  I'm nobody special, just an earnest writer, better and worse than thousands of others.

So imagine my surprise when I found out someone had attempted to rip off my writing.

I posted this blog entry on Open Salon.  I was digging through old photos (on my hard drive, not in an album--how the times change) and found it, remembered the humorous circumstances around it and then recalled everything that happened afterward.  I thought it would make a good essay so I hashed it out and posted it.  A few people enjoyed it and I was satisfied.

Then I got a private message from a user who said she enjoyed my article the first time she read it.  But she didn't think it sounded like the other articles in the blog--it turned out that she had read my article in someone else's blog.  She did a quick Google search for a line of text and found the original source, my Open Salon post, and that's when she notified me.

I ran back to the plagiarist's blog.  There it was, a near-complete cut-n-paste job, with "Marilyn" substituted everywhere I'd written "Christian," my own name.  References to the photo I'd included had been deleted, and the length of the post was truncated due to her blog's restrictions.  She had started to receive some compliments over her thoughtful post.

My heart began beating hard and my hands trembled.  I was shocked.  Someone actually plagiarized my writing.  Why would someone steal my writing?  Who was I, that someone would want to steal my writing?

I notified the plagiarist and the admin of the Web site--Match Doctor, a singles Web site with a blog forum.  In order to do that, though, I had to create an account there.  It was free, but it required a lot of information: it would not let me take action until I'd reported my hair and eye color and what I thought constituted a good first date.  For the love of St. Catherine...  That done, I wrote up a blog post, introduced myself, and stated my case with an electronic paper trail.  Here was my original post, and twelve hours later there was her word-for-word ripoff of my post.  I replicated the story on Open Salon, as well.

A few people on Match Doctor were skeptical.  One woman wondered what made the original post about the cantankerous neighbor mine any more than it was the other user's.  A couple others suggested the plagiarist wasn't intentionally malicious but wanted to share a good story (they overlooked the removal of my name in the essay).

But everyone else?  I received a tremendous wave of support from dozens of strangers.  All these writers stepped up and expressed their rage over plagiarism.  It didn't matter if I wasn't earning money on my post, and that the usurper wasn't earning money on the ripoff: plagiarism is inviolate to any degree.  Writers shared their own stories: bloggers ripping off other bloggers, journalists ripping off bloggers, professors claiming students' work as their own.  Everyone came together in sympathy and community.

I was touched and overwhelmed at this show of support.  I felt guilty that I'd been writing in a vacuum, chucking my posts out into the void, rarely reading others' works.  That's going to change: I'm going to support my writing communities and encourage other writers.  I really feel like a part of a cohesive whole and I'm going to act on that.

The plagiarist deleted the post in question (and another, in which it had been proven she'd stolen from another Open Salon writer) and deleted her own account.  The forum moderator of Match Doctor told me that normally they don't permit posts to stand that identify and attack one particular user... except everything I'd said was demonstrably true, and since the user had terminated her account, she technically was not a user any longer.

In the end, no real damage was done, and I came away with some important lessons.

- As a writer, your thoughts and ideas are valuable.  Whatever you think of your own writing, there is always someone who admires you... and someone else who envies you.

- It's worthwhile to indulge in a little "ego surfing:" select a line of your text and run it through a Google search.  You might discover where it has been "borrowed" without your knowledge.

- Your writer's voice may be the very thing that saves you.