“There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.”~ Malcolm X
Now that this battle is over, I can actually talk about it.
In the past couple of years, I have been fighting for creative control over a writing project that I had been in 2009.
I had started writing a short story about a woman who was adopted as a child and faced a lifetime abuse, and finally as a woman on her own she snapped and pretty much turn the town upside, slaughtering her abusers and killing anyone who dared to harm her again.
But I had trouble writing this story as I really didn’t have a lot of knowledge of the subject matter. Plus with the ethical problems of whether or not I should write this story at all.
So I had put it away to think about.
In late 2008, I was talking to someone in my social circles about this story and about the problems I was having writing it, much less finishing it. And they became interested and pretended to be concerned. So I shared the unfinished draft with them by e-mailing the document to them.
Shortly afterwards, I lost contact with that person. And about a year later, I found them again on a website that was there for young and beginning authors to share their creative stories.
I found my own story already posted by that old colleague. Names were changed and what not, but it was still the same story.
I contacted them to remove it, and I kicked and screamed like a child feeling so much hurt from the betrayal. But then the other person decided to fight it.
They copyrighted the story and even had it published in a small book. The story that I wrote was mixed in with a bunch of other compositions that they had written.
I fought back. Stating that it was MY story that was being used and plagiarized.
But today came the end of this battle. I lost. I only had a document file of a story that was similar to theirs, and I was unable to prove that I had written it first or had been the original author.
It sucks but I am looking on the bright side.
The ethical problems that I had with writing it in the first place, I can let go of. Neither am I responsible in any way to have to pay the other author anything over this matter.
It sucks knowing that the idea that I came up with was stolen in such a manner of deceit. Pretending that they wanted to see it, to see if they could help come up with something that I could get through it and finish the story and then their pledge that they would assist in getting in published somewhere because they liked what they read. Only to have them take original character names and places and replace those with their own and have it published.
I haven’t shared anything that wasn’t completed since then. Nor will I.
I have other projects that I can work on that I believe would actually make a good book, screenplay, or even film.
So I’m brushing off being knocked on my butt and moving on with other things.
Dambreaker 