“ONE good ending and this story is done!” said Sana to herself. Sana loved writing but she was not so good in grammar and needed some practice to write well. However, she was an overconfident girl so she never accepted that she was weak in writing. To show her prowess to her friends and family, she started copying stories from the internet and after changing names of some characters she sent them to kids’ magazines to get published.

Sana had found a good story and had just finished copying the end. She breathed a sigh of relief, glued the envelope and went out to post it in the letterbox.

After a few days of patient waiting, Sana was finally gifted with a white envelope which she was assuming was a cheque for her story. She couldn’t hold her ecstasy and shouted with glee,

“Mama, papa, Saira appi! Come quick, see this!”

Her family rushed to see what the chaos was all about, but seeing Sana with the envelope from the newspaper answered all their queries. But as Sana was just assuming and had not opened the envelope, she didn’t know that a disappointment awaited her .

When she opened the envelope, her smile faded away as inside the envelope was a white paper which read as follows:

“Miss Sana Nazi,

“We can’t publish your work as it is copied from various sources. We would like to inform you that such contributions end up only in the bin.”

Tears started coming out from her eyes, but she was still not accepting her mistake. She was blaming the magazine’s administration but her mother understood the whole matter and asked, “Sana did you copy the material you sent in the magazine?”

Sana said, “No! I didn’t, I just took a story from the internet and added my bits,”

“But dear, this is called copying!”

“But still mama...”

“No, ‘buts’ Sana, the thing you did is called plagiarism which means copying someone else’s work and naming it as your own, and it’s wrong. It would be called stealing because without the owner’s permission you are using his or her work and sending or naming it as your own.

“Mama, but it was an old story published two years ago!”

“Sana, two or one don’t matter, copying is copying. I thought you would write a story by your own but unfortunately you proved me wrong.

“Mama, I am sorry, I am not a good writer, I lack in many things, my language skills are not improving, I want to see my name publish with a story in some magazine but I know I have poor writing skills.”

“Well, dear, have you tried improving writing rather wasting time in copy-pasting others work? No, at least you have learnt a lesson!”

“Mama, I have learnt it and I promise I will never copy someone else’s work but now I’ll do hard work and improve my writing and one day you’ll see my own story published in the magazine!”

“That’s good but it shouldn’t matter if your work gets published or not, the thing that matters is your passion, enthusiasm and ability towards writing and I can say I see a very enthusiastic writer, Sana!”

“Yes, you do Mama, this time I will prove myself to you!”

“You sure will dear.”