I just took a few minutes to catch up on a plagiarism scandal currently rumbling through The Romance Writers of America. Apparently, historical author Cassie Edwards (who actually is not an RWA member at this time) is being accused of lifting material from her reference sources and just dropping it into her books. It was caught by the popular bloggers, Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books.
After reading what the Smart Bitches had to say, and then reading a couple of articles plus the posts I'm seeing on my various loops, my gut instinct is to "step back, take a breath, get a grip." Because this is UNSETTLING, to say the least. I read a comparison of a paragraph in one of Ms. Edward's books, and then the original source material, and yes, they were very similar. Yes, she could have done a better job of translating the material into her own voice, but it still didn't seem like blatant plagiarism to me. We all do research, and we all work that research into our novels. How else can we achieve any sort of authenticity in our writing? I'm very careful never to present any factual information unless it's completely within my characters' perspectives, through their eyes and in their own distinct voices. That's one way to ensure you're not just "info dumping" your research. Even so, this development is scary, especially since the Smart Bitches discovered this "plagiarism" by using software developed specifically for that purpose. Beware, writers, Big Brother is watching! (Hey, does that make me guilty of plagiarizing George Orwell? Guess not, since I just gave him credit).
I don't mean to be flippant. I take this very seriously, but my official stance is to wait and see what the courts decide (if this ends up going to court) before condemning anyone, or destroying anyone's career. Dan Brown was sued for plagiarism of nonfiction material, and was exonerated. But I do believe this may bring a change to the historical romance industry. I'm also a tremendous fan of historical fiction, and I know that at the back of each of those works is a lengthy list of sources and acknowledgments. This may well become the norm for historical romance as well, or maybe all fiction. I'll admit I've been pretty cavalier about not keeping careful track of every website visited, or every snippet of information I read in books. That's about to change. For me, this incident has been a wake up call.
It's very scary because a writer can imagine how easily this could happen. We gather information from many sources, but can we remember whether we've already paraphrased the data or not when we review our notes? Not always. I think intent should be the key here. Has someone intentionally copied whole paragraphs, or is it just an unfortunate but accidental occurrence? One also wonders about the nature of those folks who are purposefully tracking this stuff. 
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