Dear Non-Writer friends,

Dear Non-writer friends,

Firstly, thank you for the appreciation you show us for whatever we write on Facebook and here on our blogs. There is nothing more motivating for a writer than the fact that their thoughts resonate with others.

One of the ways of appreciation is sharing our work which helps us reach out more. Thank you for that. But when you simply copy paste what we have written from our timeline to your timeline on Facebook rather than sharing the original post or crediting the writer, nobody knows whether the post is written by you or by us or some other famous writer. Simply copying it on your timeline cannot be called as credit to us. It is blatant plagiarism. When it gets shared from your timeline, we never know how far it has reached because there are no credits, remember? Our sharing the work on a public forum / social media doesn't mean it is available for free copying. That thing you just copied and pasted was somebody's hardwork of hours, maybe days too. That is the reason we are so possessive about our work.

And when you do something like this, it takes away one of the most important things from us – the possibilities. From us – the ones who are still trying to make a mark for ourselves in the world of writing. You take away from us the possibility of a simple message like ‘I like what you have written’ from a stranger which could be the only reason on a bad day for us to continue writing when we are thinking of giving up. The possibility of the post going viral, the possibility of the post getting us in contact with the right people in the writing industry, the possibility of it landing our next book deal. I know I am being preposterous here but heck, there are possibilities !!

So when I have to fight it out on social media to ask you to ‘share’ the original post or give us the rightful ‘credit’ for what I have written, it makes me question as to whether I should share my next post or not, or am I being too arrogant in asking for the credit for my own work?

I know I am not a big time famous writer. I am just an ordinary blogger who is very passionate about writing and the written word in general. Thank you.

P.S. – This post was inspired by an ugly incident I faced recently on Facebook when a school friend simply copied a piece I had written on Facebook to her timeline and when I asked for credit, she and her friends turned nasty towards me.

I have used the word ‘we’ in the post above because I am speaking on behalf of my writer / blogger friends. I hope they would agree.