Best selling author accused of plagiarism

January 9, 10:29 AMBaltimore Book & Blog ExaminerRobin Bayne

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This touching story sounds like something many writers would submit to inspirational anthologies: if it had actually happened to them. Best selling author Neale Donald Walsch is under attack for publishing a story in which his son’s holiday concert had the children hold up the letters to spell out, “Christmas Love.” When one of the students held his card, the “M,” upside down, it spelled out “Christwas Love.” Very touching, a beautiful Christmas moment, but it wasn’t Mr. Walsch’s story to tell.

Another writer, Candy Chand, reports that she stumbled across the published story when surfing on the Internet. She contacted the website and Mr. Walsch, who can’t believe such a thing would happen and insists he would never purposely steal another writer’s words. He has removed himself from the blog rolls at Beliefnet .

In a statement posted Tuesday afternoon on his blog on Beliefnet, which is owned by the News Corporation, Mr. Walsch said he had made a “serious error,” and apologized to Ms. Chand and his readers.

“All I can say now — because I am truly mystified and taken aback by this — is that someone must have sent it to me over the internet ten years or so ago,” Mr. Walsch wrote. “Finding it utterly charming and its message indelible, I must have clipped and pasted it into my file of ’stories to tell that have a message I want to share.’ I have told the story verbally so many times over the years that I had it memorized and then, somewhere along the way, internalized it as my own experience.”

In a telephone interview, Mr. Walsch, 65, who said he regularly gives 10 or 20 speeches a year, said he had been retelling the anecdote in public as his own for years. “I am chagrined and astonished that my mind could play such a trick on me,” he said.

It is interesting that many of his readers and fans support and defend him, coming up with a variety of possible explanations. Even some writers hesitate to condemn him, suggesting that the memory is a strange thing and that it plays tricks on us. Perhaps they are worried that they, too, may some day inadvertently use someone else’s work.

Contact Robin at Bookandblog@yahoo.com or through her site at www.robinbayne.com.