Creative Writing

I attended a lecture forum last week and one of the presenters was a woman who taught creative writing at the college level and was now a writing coach. I engaged her afterwards and though I could not match her credentials, I did mention that I had written my memoirs of fifty-two years in the steamship industry and was self-published. She grew very serious and said I should determine where my copyright was. She went on - "Someone might like your stories of ships and film a movie with Tom Hanks and you would be left with nothing." And even now no royalties! And then I think of Marlon Brando's famous phrase from On The Waterfront - " I coulda been a contender!"
tjs