So you want to write. What’s stopping you? Most writers are halted at the outset by lack of knowledge. How about you?

People tell me they know what they want to write, but don’t know how; or they know how to write, but they don’t know what to say or how to say it; or they know how and what to write, but they don’t know how to publish. Or they think that publishing is impossible. Or at least too difficult.

To the extent any of these statements are even a little bit true, they are all as easily dispatched.

I believe that anyone with the desire to write has at least some talent for writing.

Aspiring writers often worry that they have no talent. Often, they think talented writers rise to the top and the rest simply wallow in unfulfilled desire. Again, not true.

While talent is important, talent alone will never propel anyone in any field of endeavor. What is essential is to develop the talent you do have and make the most of it.

Aspiring writers believe “everyone wants to write,” or “the field is too crowded,” or “I’m too [old, young, poor, fill-in-the-blank] to be successful because of all that competition.” Let’s look at these one at a time.

Everyone does not want to write. Trust me on this.

Millions of people don’t even want to read, let alone write. I’ve done countless book appearances in book stores and libraries where customers tell me “I don’t read.” Seems silly, doesn’t it? That someone would come into a bookstore or library and tell a published author that s/he doesn’t read? But it happens. All the time.

Sure, the field is competitive. What field worth participating in isn’t competitive? Aviation? Engineering? Medicine? Law? Politics? Sports? Simply because the field is competitive doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

New authors are published every day. It could just as well happen to you — but not if you don’t do the work. If you give up before you even start. Or if you give up before you get there.

You’re too [old, young, whatever] to “make it”? This is an excuse usually masking understandable fear of failure. Writing is a field that can be entered at any age from any station in life. No matter what your circumstance, you won’t be the first person to publish from that situation. If you doubt this, contact me with your specific “handicap” and I’ll give you at least one example of a person with that same “handicap” who has done what you seek to do.

Publishing your work is far easier today than it has ever been. While there are challenges to getting your work published today, by far the bigger challenge is finding readers who are willing to buy your published work. Finding readers who will read you for free is also challenging. But getting published? Not so much.

So you want to write? Next time, we’ll deal with the first hurdle every published writer must tackle: getting started.

Are your expressions property, the same as your car or your jewelry? Or is there some higher public interest your writings are meant to serve? Are these values mutually exclusive?

Copyright law is in a state of continuing development. Modern technology has made copyright violations of every stripe, whether in the form of e-mail, audio recording, music, fiction, non-fiction, film, news, magazines, graphic design, or any other form of expression easy to copy, paste, forward, and post.  Indeed, such takings happen millions of times every day in the modern world. To complicate the matter further, many creators are flattered and pleased when their work is widely noticed in a way they wouldn’t be flattered or pleased if someone stole their car and drove it around the world a few times.

Recently, the debate over the private nature of copyright and the public interest served by our work has renewed vigor.  The tension point is about creators making a living, particularly in our tough economy. When I send an e-mail to my mother containing family photographs I’ve taken, I not only want her to share the photos and e-mail with other family members without asking my permission, I’d be disappointed if she didn’t. But when we create something from which we hope to earn enough to feed our families, we do ourselves, our families, and ultimately the public a disservice if we simply give our work away or allow it to be taken without compensation.

Marketers argue a third point of view: we’ll never stop piracy, so we should find a way to monetize it. This is essentially what happened with music sharing and iTunes. Attempts to stop people from sharing copyrighted music without permission or payment were legally successful but practically useless because the time, energy, cost and loss of good will necessary to stop piracy was both enormous and ineffective. iTunes is exceptionally effective because it responds to the desire for music in a market sensitive way by making music easy to get, cheap to buy, easy to monitor, and profitable for artists as well as the entire revenue chain.

The internet has changed our lives, for better and for worse. Simply because technology makes it easy to steal, lie, cheat, gamble, and profit from illegal activities doesn’t mean we creators should enable copyright violations to our own detriment. Whether the public interest is served by our work or not should be a matter for each creator to determine, in my view.

What say you?

Lawyers ask me all the time: What are the rules about copyright? What does it cover? When does it attach? Are there any exceptions? How long does it last? What are the consequences of violating another’s copyright?

These questions seem simple, but they aren’t. And the answers should be easy, but they’re not. Nor is there one place where all such simple questions and easy answers are collected for authoritative quick reference.

When lawyers write, they generally write nonfiction: Opinion letters or other correspondence, briefs, motions, statutes, journal articles and the like. When we learned legal writing in law school, we learned the technical rules of research and citation reflected in the Blue Book of Uniform Citation. In practice, many courts require specific styles in written submissions. Journals are the same.

All of this, though, is concerned with how the writer organizes the symbols on the page, not what substantive material is appropriately reproduced in the content of the work.

Nothing definitive is ever definitive in the law, as we know. The answers to copyright questions are always, “Yes, except . . . ”

With that caveat, then, we’ll answer a few of the more common questions about copyright in our next post. If you have specific questions you’d like us to consider, let us know and we’ll do our best to help.

We should think about copyright and whether we are operating within the bounds of the law every time we put pen to paper or keystroke to keyboard.

Legal writing is usually technical and nonfiction. We use forms from various sources, we quote from cases, and we paraphrase statutes. We don’t often consider whether we are infringing on a valid copyright. And usually, we’re not.

Except when we are.

Not all writing lawyers use is available for free use. Copyright protection ensues the moment words hit the screen, whether the copyright is registered or not. When we quote public sources, such as statutes or cases, we are not infringing. But when we quote magazine articles or newspaper stories or materials published online, we may be infringing. As lawyers, we should adopt a policy of never, ever infringing another’s intellectual property.

Whenever you write anything, in e-mail, on your blog, in a letter or an article, consider whether the material you’ve used is subject to the intellectual property claims of its creator. When in doubt, always find out.

All lawyers are writers, but not all lawyers focus on writing as a career builder. Developing your law career through writing for publication doesn’t have to be dull, boring, or a total time drain.

Online publishing in various venues is a good place to start using writing to build a wider legal reputation that can lead to clients. Most law firms have blogs now and writing for the firm’s blog is an easy beginning.

Writing for an online audience is easier than writing for legal publications. Give it a try.

Yes. It was. And I liked it. When a friend recommended a book or I read a review, I could get a sample delivered to my iPhone in seconds. Imagine downloading 51 novels by Charles Dickens for $1. Or getting the full text of Joe Finder’s Paranoia for free — immediately. (I already own two hard copies of Joe’s book, but I didn’t have either one with me in my doctor’s waiting room; I was prepared to buy the Kindle version, too, so getting the book free as a part of a promotion was a real treat.)

And I might have stuck with the iPhone app alone but for one thing: newspapers. I’m a daily newspaper reader and have been all my life. It’s not a habit I want to change. The Kindle app for iPhone doesn’t allow me to buy newspapers and read. I’m sure there is a technical reason for that, but whatever the reason, the absence of newspapers on the iPhone app was the final push I needed to buy a Kindle.

Although I am not able to read the Tampa Tribune or the Traverse City Record Eagle on my Kindle — yet –I’ve been reading the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and several books since I bought it. I have to say that the digital delivery of content to this device is excellent. My newspapers are delivered while I sleep. They’re never wet, or missing, and there’s no recycling required. I can even clip and save articles, just like I do when I read the hard copies.

I’ve never used any of the other e-readers out there, and they may be as good or better than the Kindle. I’m not a technology fiend. Indeed, I’m something of a slow adapter. But for me, Kindle is great.

Have you tried any of the e-readers? Do you like them? What’s the best of e-reading and the worst of e-reading?

Can we protect our copyrighted content published online?

This is a common question. The uncommon answer is: You may not want to protect the content. Negotiating public attribution and compensation might be a better solution.

Often folks who ask this question really want to know how they can stop people from copying our original content and using it elsewhere. Realize we can’t control who does and doesn’t steal our content, just as we can’t control who steals our bicycle if we park it on a busy street. Our content can be surrounded by legal protections, but just like the Mona Lisa, no content will ever be theft-proof.

If what you want to know is how you can enforce a valid copyright, realize you have the full force of intellectual property law at your service, just as if you’d published off line. Online publishing is still publishing. Copyright rules and regulations apply.

Usually, creators of content (such as writers, photographers, musicians, poets, journalists, and other artists) learn that enforcing copyrights is time consuming, expensive, not worth the cost, and may be counterproductive. This is one of those times when a negotiated compensation contract may be a better answer.

Copyright enforcement generally means one of two things: stopping the publication and distribution of the stolen words and/or collecting money from the thief (in copyright law known as an “infringer”). Just as in the off line world, online infringers may not have sufficient funds to compensate you for the theft. But whether the infringer can pay compensation or not, consider whether public attribution may serve both of you better than protracted, expensive litigation.

Why do business, professional, and political folks read fiction? Maybe the best reason is that reading fiction is fun for us. It’s how we relax, how we relate to the world. We’re well educated and most of what we know we learned through reading. By this time, we’re all adults and we’ve been reading for decades. We enjoy it.