Often, when I’m stuck in an elevator with a stranger for hours and we have no mode of outward communication, someone will ask me what I do for a living.
I’ll then proceed to tell them I work in newspapers and write a syndicated newspaper column, and then describe in exhaustive detail the process of how I go about writing my columns. When I’m talking about my craft, it’s funny how time miraculously disappears – along with the person in the elevator.
To save you the joy of being stuck in an elevator with me for hours, I’ll impart my routine for writing my columns in a nutshell: I plagiarize.
That’s right. I “borrow” other people’s ideas and use them as my own. Been doing it for years, which is half of a sentence I borrowed from a Bigfoot t-shirt.
I think plagiarism has been given a bad rap in journalism. The way I look at it, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as the Bible tells us, then duplication is an even more sincere form of flattery.
It’s super flattery. It’s inflattery!
Plus, I have found that coming up with an original thought requires thought, which I find painfully painful (see what I mean?).
Plagiarism is really rather easy, and can be utilized for any type of writing, whether it be a newspaper column, an essay for school, a sermon, a novel, or a plea to the parole board.
Here are just a few tips to get you started:
• Do not plagiarize the next couple of words after “by.”
For instance, if you decide to plagiarize “Moby Dick,” do not plagiarize the part that says “By Herman Melville.” That’s a rookie mistake I learned the hard way, on several occasions.
• The best authors to lift from are ones who are dead.
I have found that dead people rarely read. That makes them an easy mark for plagiarism. Living people often get grumpy when they find out you have plagiarized their material.
For instance, one time, I learned that someone had plagiarized one of my columns. I was briefly miffed until I realized that I had plagiarized that material myself. So I contacted the original author I pirated the essay from and alerted him to the scoundrel who had stolen his work, through me. I was rather surprised when the guy wasn’t irate at the third party for plagiarizing, but rather he was angry at me for copying his work in the first place. Some people.
On a positive note, the thirdgrader who borrowed “our” essay made a B+. It pays to thieve quality.
• Change a couple of words every now and then.
Don’t copy word for word. That could get you in trouble. But if you throw in a couple of different words, it gives you some wiggle room and doesn’t change the basic concept.
For instance, if you are plagiarizing Mark Twain, which I do often, instead of writing his “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt,” write: “It is better to keep your eyes closed and let people think you are a fool than to open them and remove all doubt.”
See how well that works? Change a mere two words, and his work becomes yours. And you barely had to think.
• Don’t worry. People don’t remember what they read, or wrote, after a few minutes. It goes in one ear and out the other. Half of the stuff I write – rather, copy, then paste – I forget a few seconds later. The way I look at it, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as the Bible tells us, then duplication is an even more sincere form of flattery. It’s super flattery. It’s flattastic!
And someone, somewhere, probably in a grave, should be inflattered that I borrowed this column from them.
• Len Robbins is the editor of The Clinch County News. He can be reached at lrobbins@clinchcounty news
