This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 67: If And When Someone Steals Your Idea.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write every day. I’m your host, Sarah Werner, and I’m back again.

Life has been crazy and weird lately, and well, you can probably relate to this, but sometimes it is difficult to do the things that you love doing. So I’m glad to be back talking to you today, and I’m excited about our conversation today about idea stealing, because it’s something that I get a lot of questions about, and I realize I just ended that sentence in a preposition, but I kind of don’t care right now.

Before we dive in completely, I wanted to let you know that I am offering a podcasting master class. It’s called Podcast Now, because you know this show is Write Now and that’s Podcast Now and it just kind of made sense, but it is an intensive master class that will take you from an idea to a launched podcast. And in between we’ll be covering, gosh, all sorts of things, establishing your strategy, creating your brand around your show, creating your show art, creating your tagline, making sure that you’re writing blurbs in the right way that you need to be, and then of course we’ll be covering equipment, strategy, hardware, software, best practices for recording, all sorts of amazing stuff.

And in the end you will end up with a website, a slamming social media presence, and I can’t believe I just used the word slamming because that’s totally not me, and you will also end up with a launched show.

I took one of the novels I’d been working on and I turned it into a fictional podcast, an audio drama called Girl In Space, and it’s done very well. And I get about 30,000 listeners per episode currently, and I’m not even done with the first season yet. It’s beyond what I thought I could reach.

And so podcasting has allowed me to do that, it’s fun, exciting, it’s interesting, it was a huge challenge for me, and I’d like to share that with you. If you’re interested, there should be a link in the show notes for today’s episode, but you can also go to sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R.com/podcast-now. And if you realize like, hey, this is something I’m interested in, you can get 15% off of the course through September 3rd, which is when the course will begin, September 3rd, 2018, using the coupon code, WNP LISTENER, in all caps. I don’t know if the all caps matters, but I said it anyway.

So check out my course, it starts September 3rd, 2018. It’s going to be awesome. We’re going to have fun. We’re going to learn a lot about branding and marketing and podcasting and creating a good story, narrative flow, all of those things will be coming up in the course. So check it out, sarahwerner.com/podcast-now, and use the coupon code, WNP LISTENER, to get 15% off up until the course begins. I look forward to working with those of you who sign up. I think it’ll be a good time.

Okay. Commercials are over and we are into our topic for the day. Like I said, ideas stealing is something that people worry about a lot. And it’s also something that I have spent a significant amount of time worrying about. And so I completely relate. Every time I get an email that says, “Hey, I’m worried that my idea is going to be stolen,” my heart just goes out to you because I’ve been there.

So I’m going to tell you a little bit about my own experience with this, and then we’ll kind of get into how to respond, what to do about it, assessing whether it’s actually an issue, whether it’s damaging to your career as a writer, and then where to go from there. So it’s story time my friends.

A little over 10 years ago, back in 2006, 2007, I started writing a new novel. I had just graduated from college and I had majored in English and creative writing with a concentration in Victorian Studies. And so I had read a lot of post-Jane Austen, I had read a lot of the Brontes, I had read a lot of very proper behavioral novels of manners and such, and I was really taken by this idea. And I say taken by the idea because I think that sometimes that’s what happens, you get consumed or taken or obsessed with an idea. And my idea was, I’m going to write a novel of manners. So a very prim and proper maybe slightly pre-Victorian, maybe Victorian novel, about a feral creature, about a character, a woman who does not conform to this idea of high society manners, and in fact, subverts them and challenges them in a way that really makes us take a serious look at why we act the way we act. What are the components of society? Where do these rules come from?

You know, I was getting all like high and mighty about like, “Oh, I’m going to write this like really cool thought piece novel and it’s going to like change how people think, about how people fit into society.” I was just like really all about this idea. And my main character was taken from, I’ve always been a big fan of playing Dungeons & Dragons and I had a character who was essentially a Succubus, and I was like, “Oh man, wouldn’t it be cool if I had like this like succubus, this sort of like demon character who is kind of slightly feral and more about survival than manners set in 18th, 19th century, what have you?” So, that was my idea.

And I was really proud of this idea because it felt new. I looked around for other novels that were about Succubi, Succubuses, yeah, Succubi, and at the time Twilight had just come out and vampires were a big thing, but nobody was writing about Succubuses, Succubi yet, especially not in a historical sense. So I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, and I’d never done a historical novel before, a historical piece of fiction, and I was sort of consumed also by doing research making sure that, “Oh, would they have had marble floors? Would they have had… what type of floors would they have had in their manner? You know, my gosh, what kind of lighting would they have had at the time?” And I just dove into this novel head first, obsessed, letting it consume me and thinking that I had invented this amazing idea.

I worked on this novel for years and it was one of those things where I was still really learning how to efficiently write a novel. And by then, I mean, I was doing this thing where I was writing it, but I was like editing as I wrote it. So every time I sat down to write, every writing session began with starting at the beginning and editing from page one up until page 30, page 60, page 112. It turned into this impenetrable work of, oh my gosh, like idea bricks. Like it was this brick wall of ideas.

And I had gone about it the wrong way, and I should have just written a messy first draft first, I know that now, but I was still obsessed with this idea, but I wrote to the point where I couldn’t make any more forward progress on it because of the method in which I was writing. So, I was writing it and editing it at the same time. And it got to a point where I would sit down for a writing session and I would need it to be like eight uninterrupted hours long because I felt like I had to read my entire novel and edit it until I got to the point, and then continue from there.

Eventually this work of obsession found its way into my drawer. I think I’ve talked about my desk drawer on this show before. I have a drawer in my desk and it is full of printed out novels that I have not completed. There’s a few of them in there and this novel is one of them. This is all a preamble to tell you that years later I was at a library book sale downtown, so this may happen in your community as well, every once in a while the library does a sort of purge of books that are not circulating very well, which is an issue that we can maybe talk about at another time, because I struggle with that, but that’s a topic for another day, but I was at this library book sale and I picked up a book.

And I picked up the book because of one of the words in the title. And one of the words in the title was Succubus. And I picked that up and I held that book in my hands, I think it was called like Succubus in the City or something like that. It was sort of an Anita Blake sort of flavored urban fantasy sort of novel. And I picked up this book and I held it in my hands and I maybe gripped it a little too hard, and I said, “This was my idea.”

I felt a couple things in that moment. I felt anger, and it was like righteous anger. The feeling that someone had stolen something from me. Weirdly, I also felt a sense of pride, like angry pride, looking over the book and seeing that it was in my estimation not as “good or Good” as something that I could have or would have written and published. I also felt a sense of fear, and that fear came from a sense of scarcity. And that was really the first time I asked myself with a sense of that scarcity and terror, “How on earth am I supposed to come up with something original?”

I bought the book for 10 cents and took it home and read it. And I read the whole thing in this like indignant fury, how dare this other author steal my idea. I could have done this so much better. And I had started doing it “better” in my own estimation. So I read the book, I finished it, I put it on the shelf, and I promptly opened up my notebook. I carry around a little notebook of ideas with me wherever I go. I opened up my little notebook of ideas and I feverishly began pushing my brain to come up with something new and original that no one could ever steal from me.

Several years later, I was once again at a bookstore and I came across a new book and this book was called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. And I felt that anger rise up again, this sense that this was essentially my idea. This is what I was going to do with my Succubus in the Victorian era novel, putting elements of horror and inappropriateness into a very proper society. I felt that again, this is my idea.

Some of you may have felt this before. Some of you may have gone through this before and come out the other side and are maybe gently shaking your heads saying, “Oh Sarah, why on earth do you think you have claim on an idea? Or why do you think that this is righteously yours when this other person had the idea, put in the work, and published it?” They did it first. They got there first.

I’ve touched on this topic a little bit in episode 42 of the Write Now Podcast when I talk about, are there any original ideas left? I recorded that episode in response to a writer who wrote in and said, “I keep having ideas, and every time I have an idea I feel like someone produces something around that idea first.” And this writer, this author who wrote to me, used what she called the yellow car dilemma, which I’d never heard of before, but really stuck with me after she mentioned it.

And so the idea of this is you’re going to buy a new car, theoretically, because I don’t know how many of us can actually afford to just decide to buy a new car, but theoretically you’ve decided to buy a new car and you want to stick out, right? You want that car to be really cool. You want to be original. And you’re like, “You know what? Everywhere I go I see red cars, white cars, beige cars, black cars. I don’t see any yellow cars. So I’m going to be really different and cool and express my personality, and buy a yellow car.”

And the second you make that decision, you look around and all of a sudden all you can see are yellow cars everywhere. And it feels like everyone else around you has stolen your idea of having a unique yellow car. And this happens. It actually happens. My husband and I were in a very bad car accidents and our car was totaled and we ended up, with the help of insurance, being able to get a new car. And I picked out a car that I thought was beautiful and lovely, and I realized that probably 90% of the population in the state where we live has this car.

And it’s just funny, now I walk out of a coffee shop or a store somewhere and I’ll see my car sandwiched between two exact models of the same car. And this is a little bit what I want to talk about today is the ownership of ideas and our possessiveness of ideas.

In her book, Big Magic, which I’ve talked about on the show before, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about two things. Well, she talks about more than two things, but she talks about two things related to the ownership of ideas that I want to share with you. One of those things is the nature of ideas and the other is something called multiple discovery. I’m going to read a brief section from Big Magic from the section called Enchantment, the chapter called Ownership. And it’s on page 58 of my copy, if you want to follow along.

But she says, “I believe that inspiration will always try its best to work with you, but if you are not ready or available, it may indeed choose to leave you and to search for a different human collaborator. This happens to people a lot actually. This is how it comes to pass, that one morning you open up the newspaper and discover that someone else has written your book, or directed your play, or released your record, or produced your movie, or founded your business, or launched your restaurant, or patented your invention, or in any way whatsoever manifested some spark of inspiration that you had had years ago, but had never entirely cultivated or had never gotten around to finishing.”

She goes on to say, “In the years since I published Eat Pray Love, I cannot tell you, it is literally beyond my ability to count how many people have accused me in anger of having written their book. ‘That book was supposed to be mine,’ they growl glaring down at me from the signing line at some book event in Houston, or Toronto, or Dublin, or Melbourne. ‘I was definitely planning to write that book someday. You wrote my life, but what can I say?’ What do I know about that stranger’s life? From my perspective, I found an unattended idea lying around and I ran away with it.” That’s a short excerpt from Elizabeth Gilbert’s lovely book, Big Magic.

In it she talks about ideas in a way that you may or may not agree with. It’s a little new agey and it may not be your cup of tea, but she talks about ideas as these wisps of inspiration that sort of float around. And if you’re paying attention, you notice them and you grab them and you use them. And you turn them into a tangible creative work.

And she says, “Sometimes you reach and grab, but then you accidentally let the idea go and you don’t act on it right away, and someone else uses it. And that’s okay, because there are plenty of ideas flying around us.” I’m not a 100% sure I subscribed to this, but I like the image that it conjures. It helps me find rest in peace in the notion that sometimes we all have similar ideas at a similar time.

She goes on to talk about something that happens in the scientific community. And I’m going to read one more brief excerpt out of her book. This deals with the idea of something called multiple discovery. And it’s on page 61 of my hard cover copy of Big Magic. She talks about multiple discovery and to quote the book, it says, “This is a term used in the scientific community whenever two or more scientists in different parts of the world come up with the same idea at the same time.”

And she gives several examples including calculus, oxygen, black holes, the Möbius strip, the existence of the stratosphere, the theory of evolution, just to name a few, all had multiple discoveries. She goes on to say, “Multiple discovery happens outside of the scientific sphere as well. In the business world for example, there’s a general understanding that a big new idea is ‘out there’ floating around in the atmosphere and that the first person or company to grab hold of it will likewise seize the competitive advantage. Sometimes everyone is grabbing it once in a mad scramble to be first.”

That notion and especially the wording of that passage really struck a chord with me when I first read this book, the mad grab to be first. We live in an age where it feels like there are no new ideas, especially if you look at Hollywood. There’s remakes of everything, there’s second, third, fourth, fifth sequels of everything. And “new ideas” are at a premium. Everyone wants to be first with a new idea.

We as writers see value with a capital V in new ideas with a capital N and a capital I, what are we as creators without our ideas? And there’s a sort of pride, a sort of fierceness, a sort of protectiveness, that arises in our hearts when we feel like we are the first to have this idea, like me and my Succubus novel. I dug my claws into that so hard. It was fiercely mine and I got possessive and I was filled with pride, and then anger when I realized that other people were having a similar idea, but did I really own that idea? Or if I did own that idea, did I act upon it? Sure I started writing a novel about it, but what did I ultimately do with that novel?

Not to sound too harsh on myself, but I gave up on it. So is it okay for us to dig our claws into and possess and capture and hold ransom ideas, and do nothing with them? This is why I encourage you, if you have an idea, act on it. Write your novel, write your poem, write your memoir. Even if you end up in a situation of multiple discovery, even if you write about sparkly vampires the same time someone else is writing about sparkly vampires, it’s okay. We can’t stop other people from having ideas, or if you try to do that, you will be labeled a super villain. The best thing that you can do when you have an idea is to use it and act on it and create something really cool.

It’s also a good idea to remember that the idea is just the kernel in the center of your project. An idea, original or otherwise, isn’t the entire project, it’s not the entire thing that you’re creating, it’s the basis of what you’re creating. A novel, a book, a poem, they’re all more than ideas, they’re ideas married with words, with images, with other ideas, with characters, with dialogue, with the beauty of language, your language.

I’ve said this before, but I want to say it again. No one can write your novel, but you. No one can write that poem, but you. You have a unique set of skills and abilities and memories and images and words that all come together around the kernel of an idea to form something new and amazing.

“Now, Sarah,” you might be saying, “What if it’s not an accident? What if it’s not this idea of multiple discovery? Like what if I create something and then someone copies it? Or what if I share my idea for something with someone and all of a sudden that’s their new project?” This is a really interesting conundrum and it’s also something I have a little bit of experience with.

I started the Write Now Podcast in January, 2015, but I started working on it in September, October, November, 2014. And when I did that, I was really excited about it and I told a ton of people that I was going to start this new Write Now Podcast and it was going to help creators create things and discover who they are and all of this other stuff. So I launched it in January, 2015, so it’s been live for a little over three years. And since then, I’ve noticed when I do a search in iTunes for Write Now, a lot of other podcasts now come up.

There’s Write About Now, which was started by my friend, Jonathan Small, which was launched in September, 2017. There’s the WRITE NOW! Workshop Podcast, which was launched in December, 2017. There’s another podcast just called Write Now by The Goulet Pen Company, which was released in February, 2018. And I look at these and I see that some have higher ratings than mine and that some are doing something very similar to what I’m doing, and there’s some questions that I have to ask myself.

Number one, is having a podcast for writers an entirely original idea that only I can possess and no one else can do? Of course, not. Oh my gosh. If you’re listening to this and you want to start a podcast about writing, go ahead and do it. I encourage you to do it because you’ll be doing it in a different way than I’m doing it, and it will be yours and it will help people. And that’s awesome. Now, I may suggest that you not name it the Write Now Podcast, but you know, who am I to stop you?

I could send out a bunch of angry letters telling people to cease and desist. I could write nasty emails to these people telling them that they’ve copied my idea, which they may or may not have, I don’t know. It might be a coincidence. In fact, it probably is a coincidence. But when I first started realizing that there were a ton of other podcasts called Write Now and I began feeling indignant and angry that, “Hey, I did this first and people are copying me,” I found a podcast called Write About Now Poetry that had come out slightly before my Write Now Podcast launched. And I was like, “Oh, I wasn’t first. I don’t have some unique claim to this idea. All I can do is keep creating the Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner in the best way that I can and in a way that helps the most people.”

I have to rely on this brand that I’ve built, I have to rely on the imagery and the message that are important, and I have to trust the fact that I’ve built something strong that people can rely on, that people can learn from and listen to and enjoy, regardless of whatever else is out there that shares the name of this show.

A very similar thing happens when I launched Girl In Space, which is my audio drama podcast, and it might have been the yellow car dilemma all over again, but I started seeing other Girl In Space. You know, there’s a Single Female Alone in Space with sort of purple and bluish branding and a very similar monologue format to the show. And there’s a few ways you can take that. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And the way I see it is if somebody begins imitating what you’re doing, they look up to you and you can react in one of two ways, you can react out of fear, or you can react out of love.

There was a situation in the book world that you may have noticed. It must’ve been just a couple months ago now, but it was something called Cocky Gate. And it was largely on what I call book Twitter. And basically there was an author of romance novels that used the word cocky in the title, and she basically trademarked the word cocky and started sending cease and desist letters to other authors who had the word cocky in the title of their book. You can research, you can kind of look up exactly what happened from a legal standpoint online, but something happened within the writing community.

The person who reacted out of fear and trademarked the word cocky or attempted to, suddenly found herself essentially blacklisted by the rest of the writing community. This writer reacted out of a place of fear and scarcity, and found herself shunned. There’s another way that this author could have reacted to other books being published that had a similar word in the title. And that is to react out of love and graciousness and even gratitude.

This might sound like a weird and radical idea in the age of intellectual property and copyright law, but hear me out. I think that creating a larger writing community that is supportive and healthy is way more important than digging your claws into what you believe is your idea and lashing out at others and hurting them out of fear and misplaced pride and possessiveness of something that really cannot be possessed.

One of my favorite writers is a nonfiction writer named Seth Godin. And he wrote a blog post that has really resonated with me over the past couple months. This is an article that he posted in March of 2018, and it’s called when your ideas get stolen. And he says, “Here are a few meditations.” He offers three things to think about when you feel as though your ideas have been stolen, and I’ll provide a link to this article in the show notes for today’s episode so that you can reference it, but he says, “Number one, good for you. Isn’t it better that your ideas are worth stealing? What would happen if you worked all that time, created that book or that movie or that concept, and no one wanted to riff on it, expand it, or run with it. Would that be better?”

“Number two,” he says, “You are not going to run out of ideas. In fact, the more people grab your ideas and make magic with them, the more of a vacuum is sitting in your outbox, which means you will be prompted to come up with even more ideas, right?”

And he says, “Number three, ideas that spread win. They enrich our culture, create connection, and improve our lives. Isn’t that why you created your idea in the first place?” Finally, he says, “The goal isn’t credit, the goal is change.” I think that underlying all of Seth Godin’s points here is the question, why are you creating? Why are you doing this? Are you doing it to make yourself look awesome or are you doing it because you have ideas and a message and a creative urge to share something important with the world?

The Cocky Gate person, and even me back in my Succubus book days, was sort of possessed with, I don’t know if it’s vanity or selfishness or some delusion of grandeur or pride, but I wanted the world to know that I had come up with this idea first and that I was smart and valuable. I wanted everyone to know that I was important and that I had done this first, which of course I hadn’t. React out of love and graciousness, and maybe even gratitude. I urge you to do this because that’s how we’re going to create a better writing community and a better world, because ideas are infinite.

In the very same way that there is no such thing as an original idea, there is also no end to the ideas that are possible. It’s this gorgeous paradox and I love it, because while there are no new ideas, every idea is a new idea, and there is no shortage of them to go around. So if someone creates a superhero that is suspiciously like the superhero you created several months ago, if someone writes a novel about a Succubus that you’ve been planning for 10 years, you have two choices, create anyway with the knowledge that the idea is only the kernel beneath everything else that goes into a creative project, so create anyway, or move on. Open up your idea notebook and go onto the next idea. Ideas are infinite. Open your eyes and open your mind, and they’ll come to you.

There’s one final aspect to idea stealing that I want to cover, and that is, what if you create something and someone like legitimately steals it or takes credit for it? Like this isn’t just an imitation as the sincerest form of flattery, like this is somebody else taking one of your ideas and saying that they invented it or created it or came up with it. Guess what? I’ve had this happen as well. And I’ve had it happen in a number of different senses.

First and foremost, I ghost wrote books for a time in my life. I’m not doing it really anymore right now, but there was a time in my life when my husband and I were both ghost writing books. And essentially we would write the book and we would get paid to let someone else take the credit for it. That was the agreement, that’s what we signed up for. It was weird to see someone else’s name on the book that we had written, but that’s cool, that’s what we signed up for. But then there’s like the office situation.

So I worked in offices for more than 10 years. I spent more than a decade in marketing where ideas are currency. Like if you want to prove your value at work, have an idea. But I wasn’t a manager, I wasn’t in a leadership role, I wasn’t in a high-up position. And so, often when I had ideas, I would not get to present them as my own. I was working for a company, and at the end of the day, the company owned my ideas. And I was told since I was at the bottom of the totem pole, that my job was to come up with ideas and solutions and answers that would make my boss look good.

Maybe you’ve dealt with this too. This is one of the many, many reasons that I am now self-employed. I simply don’t like other people taking credit for my work, and maybe that’s vanity, but I’m kind of okay with it. But if you’re in a place where someone else is taking credit for your ideas and your work, whether it’s at work, whether it’s creative, there’s a few things you can do and a few things that I would encourage you to do.

I read a fantastic article in the Harvard Business Review by Amy Gallo, and again, I will link to it in the show notes for today’s episode, but she basically walks you through some rational non-angry ways, some steps you can walk yourself through that will help come to a healthy resolution. She has five steps essentially to follow.

Number one, calm down. You’re not going to accomplish anything if you act immediately out of a place of emotion, especially if that emotion is anger. Calm down, take a breath if you must write an email, but do not send that email the same day, save it as a draft and sleep on it. Resist the urge to immediately accuse someone or call them out. So sit on it for a day or two. As you’re doing that, assess the severity of the situation. Is it just outright plagiarism or is it perhaps an unintentional mistake? So is this person purposefully undermining you, or attacking you, or trying to make you look bad? A lot of us take things personally, and I know it might feel like that at first, but as you’re waiting those one to two days to respond, actually think about the other person’s intentions.

Are they intentionally trying to hurt you or is it just an oversight that they’re taking credit for your work? Is it a case of multiple discovery? Step three is to talk to them. And I know it’s really tempting in an age of Twitter and email to talk at people and to just start a smear campaign and say, “Hey, I came up with this idea first, this person is copying me.” It’s really easy for the righteous anger and the harmful actions to get going, but your first course of action should be to ask a question. And that is to just ask the other person, “Hey, I noticed this happened. Why did it happen?” So whether they copied you, whether they took credit for something that you did, just say, “Hey, why did you say I instead of we?” Or, “Why did you decide to do this?”

Use empathy because as a writer you have empathy. Use that to understand where the other person’s coming from and to work toward a peaceful and healthy resolution, which is the next step. And that is to remedy the situation. I know it’s scary to confront other people or to talk to them, but just think about it as listening and engaging in a conversation with them.

Now, if they are just truly despicable people and they’re like, “Ha ha ha, I stole your idea, deal with it,” then at that point you’re probably not going to come to a peaceful resolution and you may need to take legal action, but they may be very reasonable and say, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I just overlooked it. I was on a role, I was talking, I took credit, I’m sorry. I’ll make sure that next time I give you credit, or that I sent out an email saying like, ‘Hey, this person came up with the other half of this idea.'”

Step number five is to be a good example. Be a good role model. When someone inspires you, make sure you’re giving credit. I talked a little bit about Girl In Space earlier and how I was seeing maybe what might be some copycat shows showing up, but if I ever think about that and start to get a little indignant or angry, all I need to do is think about what inspired me. And then I realize this wasn’t entirely my idea. My ego is getting in the way.

I was inspired by so many other things when I was making this show, notably the podcasts, Wolf 359, which is the story of a crew aboard an abandoned space station, the audio drama, Tin Can, which is what inspired me to do a single narrator for the show, the TV show, Firefly, which is about a band of unlikely heroes aboard a small spaceship, even the Princess Diaries, which was originally my inspiration for this. I think I’ve mentioned that before on this show, but I read that book growing up as a teenager and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is funny, it’s honest, it’s a diary format. I kind of want to do this in space.”

And so I can’t even take credit for my own ideas for my own show, and I think it’s good and healthy to remember that and to pay it forward. Ask yourself, “Am I giving credit where credit is due? Did someone else help me think of this idea? And how can I be a good role model in the writing community and making sure that I’m reacting out of love and not fear?” At the end of the day, I think it’s a really good exercise to remind yourself why you are writing and why you are creating. Are you doing it for credit? Are you doing it out of fear? Are you doing it to boost your ego or maybe justify the size of your ego? Or are you doing it out of the joy, the compulsion, whatever you call it, the joy of creating, the need to create, the need to share ideas and make the world in the writing community a better place?

Okay. And someone just started doing construction work outside of my house, and so I’m going to take that as my cue to wrap things up, but thank you for listening today. Ideas are important and talking about ideas is important and it’s something we need to do, I think, more of. It’s at the basis of everything we do as creators. So let’s keep this conversation going. You may agree with everything I’ve said today, you may agree with nothing that I’ve said today, and either of those is okay. I would love to hear your thoughts.

If you would like to get in touch with me and let me know what you’re thinking, you can leave a comment in the show notes for today’s episode out at sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R.com. You can also contact me directly if you fill out the contact form on my website. I do read every single email that I get, those comments go to my email, and I’m not always able to respond to all of them, but I do read all of them. So please do share your ideas and your thoughts with me. I would love to hear what you think.

That being said, and I think it might be just like a giant industrial lawnmower that’s coming around, so hooray! In light of this I would like to thank everyone who listened today. I would also like to thank all of my Patreon supporters. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform that allows people like you to, I don’t know if I want to say like pay people like me for the work we’re doing, but you know, kind of.

If you’re interested in becoming a Patreon of the Write Now Podcast, you can do that by going out to patreon.com, that’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com, and searching for the Write Now Podcast. And you can do that for a dollar an episode, $2 an episode, $700 an episode, whatever you feel moved to donate.

Special thanks go out to Patreon patrons Elise Jane Tabor 00:41:57, Sean Locke, Rebecca Werner, Gary Medina, Lilith Black, Caitlin Heron, Megan Corrarino, Lucille Valentine, Chris Kuropatwa, Colleen Cotolessa, and Warwriter. Thank you all so much for your contributions. You help me pay for hosting, equipment, everything that goes into creating this podcast. Hopefully in the future some better soundproofing so you’re not listening to lawnmower dude outside.

All right, friends, I’m going to let you get back to your writing. I want to encourage you to embrace the ideas that come your way, to act on them. Don’t hoard them away, create something really cool with those ideas that come your way. And if you notice that someone else is perhaps stealing, or copying, or taking credit for your ideas, react rationally not emotionally, and make sure that when you do react, it is out of love and not fear.

With that, this has been episode 67 of the Write Now Podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write every day. I’m Sarah Werner, and I think you probably have some pretty great ideas.