Author Archives: Jason Roeder

Reader, you’re hilarious. This has been verified by your mother, a co-worker who says you’re one of the 20 funniest people he knows, and the stand-up comedy teacher who will tell you anything to get you to catch his set at the smaller of two mini-golf snack bars.

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Jason Roeder takes a humorous  look at the generally non-humorous topic of plagiarism.

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Wherever I go, everyone wants to know how I assemble the columns they occasionally skim once they’ve finished Writer’s Digest’s useful content. Well, I describe my writing process like this: “Writing is like driving. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip—what the hell was that? Did I just hit a deer? Aren’t there laws requiring deer to wear reflectors? I should go back. No, no, nothing I can do now. If I happen to pass a roadside trauma center, I’ll be sure to give them a heads-up. Now, which way is Mexico? … ”

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A few years ago, I shared a short story with my writing group. It was a speculative work that dared to ask, “What if the circus took over the world?” The comments above were the three most encouraging I received from my cohorts. Of the two remaining members of my group, one handed me back my heavily wept-upon manuscript without a word, while the other simply dropped out of society.

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I’m writing this piece in a coffee shop. I know, I know, you think of a coffee shop as a place where people slurp down their lattes as fast as burn prevention allows before leaping from their seats to make room for the next customer; a place where, if you dawdle for more than 10 minutes, you’ll be force-fed the last morsel of your cranberry-orange scone and shoved onto the sidewalk by a bouncer who’s hoping you give him an excuse to choke you out.

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