Is it plagiarism or zeitgeist?
On the mystery of the muse (and the Mel Robbins controversy)
This is a Secret Post on my Secret Substack.
In addition to my regular book, podcast, and favorite things recommendations, my goal is to write more essays in 2025.
There’s a story in Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2015 book Big Magic that has stayed with me for a decade.
Big Magic is a book about the mystery of creativity, and in it Gilbert shares a belief that the idea for a novel she was working on (and had set aside) was passed spiritually to fellow writer Ann Patchett when they hugged hello and shared a brief, friendly kiss.*
The details of this story are specific. Gilbert’s work-in-progress was about a woman in Minnesota who is sent by her boss (who is also her lover) to work in the amazon rainforest. Gilbert’s work on the novel had dwindled and her attention was elsewhere, and just a few years later Patchett released a book with the exact same premise. To Gilbert’s surprise, when the two authors compared notes on a timeline, Patchett’s idea for her book came around the same time they shared their kissable greeting.
Gilbert goes on to write about the nature of ideas and how they exist outside of the artists who bring them to life. She posits that the ideas want so badly to be in the world that they persist until they find a willing vessel.
“That’s our magical thinking around it. There is no explanation for that. Other than the one I’ve always abided by, which is that ideas are conscious and living, and they have will, and they have great desire to be made, and they spin through the cosmos looking for human collaborators.” - Elizabeth Gilbert
I’ve thought about this idea ever since. Before you dismiss it as the woo-woo language of artists, think how often it seems to be true. Books, movies, songs, plot lines, even just philosophies seem to arrive across spaces and mediums all at the same time.
Examples of this would be:
TV shows about doctors, royal families, vampires, and selling drugs as a way to support your family. Multiple shows on these topics were popular all at once. Is it competition or trend?
In books, the recent spate of divorce memoirs or midlife menopausal novels has been kind of staggering. Maybe it’s because good writers are just in that stage of life, and eager buyers are spending money on that content.
Twenty years ago, I worked on a tv show about British nannies while another show about a British nanny aired at the same time. This was a blatant ripoff but they were both large network shows. Are these decisions just business? Or something else?
TikTok trends eventually migrate to Instagram, where old people like me are more likely to see them and have no idea where the idea originated. Everyone can’t know everything, but what onus (if any?) is on the consumer to know if they’re perpetuating plagiarism?
Watching the Super Bowl, my whole family was flabbergasted when two ads from two different companies featured flying facial hair. This is kind of a silly one, but seriously, what happened there? Two different ad agencies had the same random idea and somehow they both also got to air in front of the biggest audience of the year?
Which of these scenarios are total thievery, are “inspired by” something else, or come from a small planted seed that blossomed in everyone’s imagination at the same time?
Sometimes it’s simply a trend, like when book covers all share the same fonts and colors for a season because that aesthetic is selling well. Sometimes it’s blatant copy catting or opportunists at work. But how to know the difference between something popular because it’s relevant or because it’s stolen?
I’m not sure we always can know the difference for sure. Some ideas are so big and vague that different artists tackling the subject doesn’t mean there’s anything shady going on, it doesn’t even mean there’s a lack of creativity happening. When an idea enters the zeitgeist and several voices speak to it, is it unoriginal? Is it plagiarism? What if the idea itself is doing some good in the world? Does that make it different?
I think about the late 2010s when there was an onslaught of self-help books aimed at women trying to convince them that they were ENOUGH just as they were. This is a vague, big idea, and maybe different audiences would hear this message from the right voice at the right time in just exactly the right tone to resonate, in such a way that it moves the needle culturally. Or maybe the sheer repetitiveness of the message forces it to sink in on a whole generation of women who needed to hear it.
What about when someone already famous makes an idea popular that originated with someone much less known? Or when it’s new to a certain generation but is clearly derivative of art that came before? In my mid-40s, I’ve now reached a tipping point where I hear or read young artists and can identify their influences. This didn’t happen when I was younger because I had no context. I distinctly remember my pre-teen self being shocked to learn that the opening riff to “Ice Ice Baby” was a total ripoff of “Under Pressure.”
Nowadays when my teenager plays Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams in the car, I can easily hear Taylor Swift’s influence. Taylor Swift, in turn, is of course influenced by Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks, to name just a few. History marches in this way, it’s not good or bad, you’re just old enough (or educated enough) to spot the chain.
In my own work, I’ve seen dozens of online writers, podcasters, and influencers take an idea and run with it, often with one having more success than the first person who said it. This seems like a downside (or upside, I guess, depending on your view) of internet virality. Whoever gets the most shares wins. Who said it first doesn’t always matter. It comes down to who packaged it best. Or who started off with a larger audience. Or both.
I’ve had tons of people send me Gretchen Rubin’s internet challenge #25in25 to read 25 minutes a day in 2025, because I’m known in my tiny little online circle for preaching about the power of the 20-minute reading timer. I’ve been talking about the 20-minute reading timer for so long (over 15 years, since I developed the method for myself when I was breastfeeding my daughter), but of course timing your reading isn’t an idea you can copyright. It’s not anything I ever made official. And how could I? It’s not that original, it’s just that I have repeated it for so long as to become known for it among my own readers and listeners. Nothing about me thinks Gretchen Rubin took this from me, she doesn’t even know me. And I like her work a lot! But yeah, sometimes it’s a bummer when someone with a much larger following “creates” something you created a long time ago.
Likewise, I almost laughed out loud when I saw on a list of anticipated books for 2025 that Chris Guillebeau is releasing a book this spring called Time Anxiety. Again, I most certainly do not own any rights to these two very common words used together, but it is also the title of one of the most popular podcast episodes I’ve ever made, originally aired in 2021. Years later, I still get regular messages from listeners that the Time Anxiety episode unlocked something in them they didn’t even know they’d been holding, and I’m so proud to help them name it.
Both the reading challenge and time anxiety ideas are part of the zeitgeist. I didn’t make it up, nor did Rubin or Guillebeau. People care about the topic, and it has a certain amount of stickiness to it that makes it resonate with others. We’re all talking about something that matters to us that we hope helps others. We all express it in our own tone to our own people. This is what happens with creators, especially on the internet.
But then there are controversies like the latest with Mel Robbins and her new book The Let Them theory that gives one a lot more pause. If you haven’t gotten wind of this yet, let me sum it up for you: a poet named Cassie Phillips wrote a poem called Let Them in 2019 that went viral on TikTok and beyond in 2022, launching a Let Them tattoo movement. I remember the poem coming across my feed and being inspired by it.
In 2023, Mel Robbins makes her own video about the “discovery” of the Let Them theory from her daughter. She doesn’t credit Cassie Phillips, and maybe that’s not where she “discovered” it, since, as established, ideas catch like wildfire and spread. However, she must have been aware of the poem and Phillips by the time she attempted to trademark the Let Them phrase in 2024, since the trademark was declined based on Phillips’s poem and licensing to numerous Etsy creators making products with the Let Them phrase, poem, and reproduction of Cassie’s handwriting that appears at the top of the original work.
When The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins was published in 2024 and became a major best seller, the fact that Robbins gave no credit to Cassie Phillips was noticed and has been a source of conversation for the last month or so. Does she owe the poet a credit? The phrase and idea isn’t original to the poem*. As Robbins said herself in a quote to The Guardian, the Let Them idea originates in stoicism, in Buddhism, in the serenity prayer. Robbins has simply packaged the philosophy in her own words with her own stories and it’s potentially changing lives.
But is it that simple? Mel Robbins is a lawyer. I doubt that she didn’t know about the poem before her book’s publication, given the trademark attempt and her careful wording throughout that it was a theory she “discovered” as opposed to created. In my mind, a nod to the viral poem would simply be appropriate and generous, but maybe it also opens her up to litigation, which, as a lawyer, she knows best how to avoid.
The legal answer might be different than the karmic one. Maybe creators don’t owe anything to their inspirations or influences. Maybe in ancient times as in our modern one, the person with the biggest platform (or best connections) wins. Maybe audiences can instinctually tell the difference between a universe-inspired work from a borrowed one.
Mark Twain famously said that there is no such thing as a new idea. Even the Bible tells us that there is nothing new under the sun. That’s a comfort, I suppose, when the same idea appears over and over again. But for artists fighting through the noise of time, what does that mean? That our ideas are never our own? That we should release them back into the universe or accept that they were transferred via a kiss?
And as consumers, should the origination of ideas matter? And, not to pile on to an already Big Topic, but where does Artificial Intelligence fall into this? AI is being trained on existing work to create derivatives by computer. If it came from art does it stay art? Does this change the definition of art? And is the answer different when we’re talking about computers than when we’re talking about humans training themselves on other humans’ work?
I used more question marks in this essay than I’ve ever used in a piece of writing, but that about sums up where I am right now in this conversation and also just in the world.
I’d love to hear where you are. Leave a comment to join in on this conversation.
Lots of question marks allowed.
*You can read a full explanation for the Elizabeth Gilbert/Ann Patchett story
*This article and this follow up article explain the Cassie Phillips Let Them theory case a little more in depth
*I have not listened to it yet, but someone recommended this episode of the Conspirituality podcast about rampant plagiarism in the self-help community
*Several commenters on different sites and posts I was reading pointed back to this sermon by TD Jakes from at least 20 years that is titled Let Them Walk (it’s only 4 minutes and is worth your time). Weirdly (or maybe not??), in this sermon TD Jakes also repeats the phrase “Wash your face!” and I couldn’t help but be reminded of another writer with a book of the same name who has also been accused of borrowing ideas.
*If you want to support poet Cassie Phillips, she is publishing a book this month
Oooh, now this is a juicy topic - thank you for tackling it with such nuance, Laura!
The "Let Them" poem was never on my radar, and when I read the outlines of this story, it initially felt like an overreaction to me. Then I read about the trademark part, and that changed my reaction from "meh" to "hmm, this is sketchy." Even if Robbins really had no idea, offering some kind of hand-up to a less-known writer just seems like the right and generous thing to do. The opposite of punching down, you know?
And since you mentioned Gretchen Rubin, I have two stories for you. "The Happiness Project" came out in 2009, when my daughter was a baby and I was just starting work on my own book about finding happiness in motherhood, which was published in 2011. I wasn't reading a lot of self-help outside of the motherhood genre at the time (heck, as the mother of five kids including a newborn I wasn't reading a lot of books, period) so while I knew about Gretchen's work I hadn't yet read the book when my publisher sent her a copy of my book to hopefully blurb, which she very graciously did. Imagine my horror when I read her book - after my manuscript was completed - and saw that one of my chapter titles - "Make Your Bed" - was a tip that factored heavily in her book. I promise you, I did not lift that idea from her, or any other writer. Or...did I? I had in fact been noticing for years that making my bed in the morning helped me feel like a functional human being during a time that I was surrounded in kid chaos, but maybe both Gretchen and I got the idea from another writer at the same time years earlier? Or, the idea was just in the water? Who knows. Anyway, I had the opportunity to connect with Gretchen multiple times in the years after my book released and she was always kind and gracious, so I figured she didn't hold it against me.
AND THEN...when I was working on my most recent book about parenting older kids, I was making my blurb request list and Gretchen was on it...when I saw that she had written a fantastic essay for The Atlantic on a similar topic. For a moment I almost let that coincidence stop me from asking, lol. But I got over it, and she graciously agreed to read my newest book too (and ultimately wound up blurbing it). I guess my point is that whether it's a simple mistake, credit getting overlooked, or zeitgeist, it can happen in either direction. Me writing about the same topic as Gretchen Rubin isn't likely to harm her career, as her audience is so much bigger than mine. But because her audience is so much bigger than mine, her generosity CAN help me. For Cassie Phillips' sake, I wish Mel had been as gracious to Cassie as Gretchen was to me. And actually, I wish that for Mel's sake too, because something tells me it feels really yucky to have this out there, and to know you've caused harm whether intentionally or not, harm that you COULD reverse, and to instead feel you must double-down.
This comment is already really long so I'll just add one more thing. I've been writing for publication for nigh on twenty five years, and in spite of the fact that stuff like this sometimes does happen, one of the things I hate hearing the most from writers is that they won't put their ideas out there because they're afraid they'll get "stolen." Like...what is the other option? Sit on it for the rest of your life? Wait for it to be "perfect" so you can release it on the world and experience immediate fame and success? El oh el, that is not how it works, my friends! Producing a creative work is one small part inspiration and one giant part execution and holding back to protect yourself just stagnates the flow.
Recently I read Alicia Drake’s excellent biography of Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, where she tells the story of a young YSL sketching a collection that was almost identical to the one Dior was about to release. YSL was still a student, had never met Dior, and in fact no one had seen Dior’s soon-to-be announced work. The rest of the story goes that YSL’s teacher recommended him to Dior, who hired him immediately, because he really was a creative mind who could read the zeitgeist / had his finger on the pulse.
I love that story, loved the Gilbert anecdote in her book too, and I do think some people have that talent. I also think, as you pointed you, that in the self-help sphere there’s a lot of mutual inspiration and “yes, and” going around. Which is so great! But yeah, it also doesn’t hurt to mention where your inspiration comes from, especially if you’re someone with a fairly large following and who can help an artist who maybe hasn’t made it as big..