Today guest blogging on Naughty and Spice, we welcome author Cindy Kirk who writes for Harlequin, Silhouette and Avon!

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This week on a writer’s loop, a woman (we’ll call her Jane) mentioned how an unpublished author she’d recently started mentoring was giving her fits and she was thinking of cutting her loose but worried how she’d react. The woman had been so difficult Jane was considering if she should continue to mentor anyone. One thing I mentioned to Jane was the fact that many authors refuse to read unpublished material because they’re concerned about being accused of stealing an idea. Even if the charge was unfounded, damage to the mentor’s reputation could still be done.

This got me to thinking….can you really steal someone’s idea? I use to think you couldn’t, because even if each of us got a brief story idea, we’d all develop it differently. And even if we got a detailed outline, our “voice” would be different and the way we’d write the scene would vary.

On the other hand, I think of Janet Evanovitch and how she researched the market before she came up with the idea of quirky bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. What if during this research phase Janet participated in a brainstorming session (that is so popular among writers)…and what if she discussed her idea–maybe even took it a step further and outlined her vision for the book? What if another writer (who’d listened intently during the brainstorming session) saw the possibilities and proposed that same story before Janet had a chance to go forward with her own proposal? To me that would definitely be theft of an idea.

I’m not overly paranoid, but if I had a great idea for a story that I hadn’t yet proposed to my editor, I don’t think I’d participate in a brainstorming session or even mention the idea to anyone other than my two critique partners (who I trust implicitly).

What do you think? Can you really steal another writer’s story?