: Coincidence of Similarity in Writing I am a blogger and sometimes I find articles with similar content or an idea coincidentally similar as mine which is not published at the time of reading

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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".

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Don't worry - everything has been done before; just try to be yourself

Your goal shouldn't be to be the only one to ever blog about something. This is especially true for fiction as there are only a handful of basic plots in existence and the main goal of an author is to provide a new version, telling the story in his own words.

But this also applies to non-fiction. There are many people with similar interests and therefore whenever there is something new people will interact with it and report about it, for example on their blog. If you were the only one who was interested in the topic then probably nobody would ever want to read about your stuff. If there are lots of people who might want to read about something then there are likely lots of people who might want to write about that thing.

If you find something similar analyze it - and make yours as unique as possible

If I found something that is very similar to something you have made a draft about then you can analyze what you have found. See what it talks about mainly, what it talks about only superficially. See how long it is.

And then try to figure out whether you want to talk about it the same way. Do you think some important things didn't get the attention they deserve? Write about them. Maybe even link to the other article if you don't want to talk about the same points extensively as the other author. Try to figure out which parts should be left out. See whether you want to write a more condensed article or a more in-depth article. And above all: use your own words. Some people like articles that read like everyday speech. Some people like articles that sounds scholarly. Some people like jokes, some people hate them. Some people prefer examples, some prefer theoretically analyzing things.

Find what you and your readers prefer and give everything your personal twist. Then it doesn't matter whether someone talks about something similar. Your articles might simply appeal to another audience. One that is more like you and less like the other author - whether that is about the choice of words, language, emphasis on certain parts, having more or less links to other sources, examples, just being more accessible because they know you and your blog from some other topic, ... depends on what you want and what the exact topic is.

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