A few days ago my husband read me something he found online; the assertion that "The Fugitive" is just another version of "Les Miserables."
I hadn't through about it that way before, but as soon as he said it I said "Of course."
That idea, and my instantaneous response, reminded me of the notion that there is really nothing new under the sun. No story that hasn't been told many times through music, art, words, or dance.
It's a problem for every creative person, the feeling that whatever they do, whatever they create, someone else has already done it.
Create giant billiard balls? It's been done. We spotted these on a road trip through the Nevada desert. I don't know what these were originally, but I think you'll need a discarded power pole as a cue stick!
This may feel like more of a stumbling block for those of us who are of "a certain age," because we have had time to absorb so much more of classical and popular culture, and thus are more likely to feel that we've seen it all before. While a 20-something may discover superheroes through movies and television, us old folks found them in the pages of ten-cent four-color comic books on spinner racks in the drug store. To us they are characters and stories that have been around forever, but to that younger person they're new and exciting.
Some of us read Tolkien when his were just about the only fantasy novels available and his tales of elves and dwarves and orcs and ents felt new and exotic. Later generations discovered fantasy stories from other authors, or from television and movies. Yet even Tolkien’s stories of epic struggles between the forces of good and evil had been done before. He just found his own way to tell them.
One Ring To Rule Them All. But Tolkien wasn't the first to write epic stories of the battle between good and evil. And he wouldn't be the last.
Mankind has been cooking since the discovery of fire. We occasionally find new ways to prepare food, or new combinations of ingredients, but it's still the same basic concept.
The same goes for carpentry. Designs may differ somewhat, but when it comes down to it there are only so many ways you can construct a place to sit, or a chest to store your valuables.
I say all of this not to discourage or depress you, but to make you realize that even though it's all been done, it hasn't been done by you.
And that is what is important.
You.
You are an individual.
You have a unique combination of genetics and experience that make you a singular phenomenon is the history of the universe.
There may be people who look like you, through genetics or just happenstance. There will be people who share your outlook, your ideas and ideals. But no one else has amassed the exact same combination of nature and nurture that produced you.
Flour. Water. Yeast. The same basic ingredients, yet each one is different, depending on the baker.
I had just this discussion with a friend at work just a couple days ago. She was lamenting her 14-year-old daughter's self-inflicted quarantine haircut, hidden beneath her hoodie while the family celebrated her older brother casting his very first ballot. The contrast was not lost on the mother. The son, their firstborn, was a natural athlete and an all-around good kid. The daughter is also a good kid, and extremely bright and accomplished. But even with the same parents, the same loving and industrious home, and the same academic and athletic accomplishments, she marches to her own beat.
And cuts her own hair.
My response was that it's just hair. It will grow back, and she needed to feel like her own person, even if no one sees it but her family. Besides, I can't say too much when my own daughter's hair is the color of cotton candy! (Just for the record, it's really cute!)
The point is, this son and daughter had similar nature and nurture, but they are different people, and the daughter knows it.
If we were to give each of these two a set of parameters and ask them to tell a story-through music, dance, dramatic presentation, food, whatever medium they wanted-each story would be unique. They likely wouldn't even choose the same form of expression.
They are individuals.
The same goes for all of us. Here's another example, even closer to home for me.
Many years ago my husband and I were on the freeway behind a James River Paper truck. Their logo at the time was a stylized JR that we decided looked like a cactus wearing a seatbelt. That led to a conversation about why the cactus was wearing a seatbelt, and we each had our own answer. Fast forward a few weeks and we had each written a story about the cactus in a seatbelt.
The James River logo that inspired the cactus stories. The logo was retired several years ago (making it hard to find a good example of the logo) but I STILL think it looks like a cactus wearing a seatbelt. Don't you?
Mine was a bittersweet women's fiction story about a woman starting over after the death of her fiancé, taking the cactus with her to her new home. His was about two extraterrestrial frat brothers on spring break, called "The Cactus, the Coyote, and the Lost Planet Joyride." Why was the cactus driving the stolen Cadillac? Because the coyote didn't have hands, of course. And I will bet if I asked you to tell me why the cactus was wearing the seatbelt you would have a completely different story.
Harlequin built an entire publishing empire on publishing romance novels. The basic plot of every story is boy meets girl, complications ensue, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again, they live happily ever after. A quick search turns up statistics from 2002, when they published over 1,100 versions of that story, had revenue of more than half a billion (with a B) dollars, and other publishers released almost that many more.
Why? Because those stories-despite adhering to the basic structure-were all different. They were written by different people with different voices and points of view.
Whenever we start to feel discouraged, to think we can't come up with anything original, to believe that in order to be creative we have to do something that has never been done before, we need to remember this.
It might have been done before, maybe by dozens, or hundreds, of people. But there is one big difference.
It hasn't been done by you.