Current mood:	contemplative
Current music:	More 80s

Can you "steal" an idea?
I've had this random thought progression over the past few days about the value of an idea. It stemmed from me thinking about my fiction writing class and how sometimes I have a "great idea" for a story, but then I can't make a great story about it because my writing isn't good enough. Then I started thinking about the phrase "He stole my idea!" and how it really doesn't have much validity to it. Take a few "ideas": A series of books about a magical school for wizards, a bulb that can produce light without fire, the theory of relativity, hybrid cars, putting a man on the moon. Are these ideas worth anything by themselves? I just thought of an idea that we should invent a medication that can cure AIDS and cancer and cystic fibrosis at the same time. That doesn't mean I can do anything with it! The only real "ideas" that I can think of that are worth something on their own are catchy slogans, and even those need to go along with a catchy marketing campaign.

I think the real motive behind claiming someone "stole" your idea is that you couldn't do anything with it and somebody else did a much better job with it. I would probably feel upset if someone took one of my story plots and wrote a kick-ass story when I only wrote a mediocre one. But if I had the skills to write the better story in the first place, then it wouldn't matter if someone "stole my idea."