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Not Every Reuse of Ideas is Plagiarism
Everything has been said and done before
A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling “Thief.” If he is wise, he has not been impoverished. Nor has the fool been enriched. The thief flatters us by stealing. We flatter him by complaining― Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century.
Imagine having found the perfect writing group. You can't wait for the first meeting. You are excited to learn all about writing and make some new friends. You arrive at the meetup; you introduce yourself and you take a seat. The host comes and gives a long-winded speech about plagiarism, all the ways it's wrong, and how it's not tolerated in the group. The meeting is almost over and another person comes and talks more about the consequences.
You promise yourself never to fall into the plagiarism trap. You go home and begin doing your research to write. As a new writer, you need to research the things you want to write about because you don't know everything yet. You realize everything you want to say has already been said and you aren't sure how to proceed. You don't want to plagiarise or patch write but after your research, the knowledge in your head isn't yours. You just learned it. You are confused. If you write what you just researched, is it considered plagiarism? Patch writing, maybe?
