Fear is no way to live, especially as a creative person.
Being “ripped” off is such a tricky situation to find yourself in, it’s sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Especially when it seems like the questionable use of content is coming from all sides, and people “leaning on your brain”, without giving you credit span the professional and personal realm. They say all is fair in love and war, I have to say that it appears to be even more fair when dealing with creative concepts.
I get it, everybody wants a hit, everybody wants their venture to be successful. I mean if we didn’t, then why would we even bother trying? It’s like just stay in bed if you’re not going out into the world to put your best foot forward in your pursuits. I don’t fault anybody for wanting to accomplish a positive end result from their efforts, but what does upset me, as a struggling writer/creative person is feeling like other people with a larger platform are poaching from me, but not giving me the credit, or paying for it.
Doesn’t feel great.
But what’s a girl to do? Stop being creative in order to protect my ideas? How on earth would that work? How would I get my ideas recognized if I never put them out there? How do I sell a show if I never pitch it to anybody?? How do I get a book deal if I stop writing???
The answer is I don’t. In order to achieve and accomplish anything I have to continue to put myself out there. That means I have to write my blogs, I have to pitch my TV shows, and I have to put one foot in front of the other even if other people are walking around getting pat on the back, and getting paid off ideas that are very close to mine. I also need to remind myself that it might just be coincidence, these people and I might just be thinking the exact same things at the exact same time. Right??
At the end of the day my dad has told me over and over again, that you one cannot fully protect intellectual property. This is the line of work I find myself in. Knowing this I get nervous just mentioning titles of books I’m working on, and shopping. But the bottom line is that none of us can live in fear, having faith that my right idea will hit at the right time is the thing that keeps me going, even when other ideas of mine seem to have found their way out into the world, and not at the end of my pen, as it were.
Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm…