No, no it wasn’t; it was Jane Smith’s, and her post on the topic is definitely worth a read.

Plagiarism is a contentious issue for everyone involved in publishing, but it seems to have a unique resonance for the unpublished author. Aspiring writers have a serious fear of having their ideas stolen; this is probably because they assume that, without having published anything, they’ll never be able to prove that they wrote their book in the first place. It’s easy to feel vulnerable when you’re unpublished. The publishing world can be a pretty intimidating thing, so it’s natural that writers have trust issues when they’re first sending out their queries. As some have explained, though, this fear is largely unfounded. There are plenty of scammers in the literary world, but they’re not interested in your manuscript, just your money.

Frankly, I’ve never much worried about someone plagiarizing me. I’m not concerned that someone might steal my ideas, because you can’t copyright those, and they’re overrated anyway. An idea is not nearly as important as its execution. Here’s an idea: dead people come back to life as flesh-eating monsters. That’s the idea behind great works of fiction like the original Dawn of the Dead and World War Z, but it’s also the idea behind Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2, which is nowhere remotely near great (but still worth seeing because a zombie fights a shark in it).

I’m not worried about people stealing my exact words, either; partly because this would be easy for me to prove, and partly because I’m not writing magical spells that get me instantly published. I’ve been trying to get an agent for my book - just the first step on the very, very long staircase that leads to publication and success - for nearly a year now and I’m still at square one. Anyone who’s lazy enough to steal my writing wholesale rather than pen their own is not going to have the patience for this process.

No, my plagiarism worries are from the opposite angle entirely. I’m always worried that I’m ripping someone else off without even realizing it. I’m not the only one to consider this; there’s even a name, “cryptomnesia,” for the supposed phenomenon of remembering other people’s ideas but mistakenly believing them to be original. Whether or not this actually exists, it’s something I worry about regularly. I suppose it’s rooted in some sort of insecurity about my own creativity and originality; whatever the cause, it’s silly, but it’s something I’ll probably always think about.