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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33382
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33382
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

## Don't Worry, and Don't Steal.

If it is similar, don't worry about it. _Approximately_ one billion articles have been written and published about the implications of various findings of Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's campaign, and it may surprise you to learn the ideas, projections and predictions presented in those articles are not 100% unique.

We all like to think we are unique: A trait not unique at all! The truth is, we writers would not have an industry if our audiences were not pretty uniform in their experiences, reactions, and expectations to stories. We are quite similar in that regard, it is why one book by Rowling or Brown can sell tens or hundreds of millions of copies: Those readers are **not at all** unique in what they find entertaining.

This is also why we can have schools that teach a million random kids how to add or be lawyers, why we have a language at all, or art, it is how newscasts and talk shows reliably know what will interest viewers: We are not that unique!

Go ahead, give your take on it, and don't worry that your idea is similar. What counts and is original is your "voice". The details of how you order your argument and the facts, the words, the sentence structures you use. Pick ten articles about the same damn thing, and chances are you can judge them and rank them. What makes one the best and another the worst? Presentation and choices in the details.

There are thousands of paintings that are portraits of women, but there is a most famous and compelling one: The Mona Lisa, from 1503. Definitely not the most beautiful woman ever painted, definitely not salacious in the least, but still by most measures (prints, views, $ value, etc) the most admired and celebrated as perfection. I don't think Leonardo Da Vinci worried that other artists had also painted portraits of women with a landscape background.

### Don't Steal.

If it has anything particularly impressive or insightful or clever or admirable in it (be honest with yourself), **_do not steal it._**

Feel free to quote it, link to it, or reference it. Give credit where credit is due: If you did not think of it, or would not have phrased it the same but now think their phrasing was best, then let them have it. That is what is original about their writing, not the vague idea you both had that "if X, then Y", but how they argue it and phrase it and prove that point.

**_That_** is what you should not copy. Find your own "voice".

Original score: 4