What’s My Thing?

When starting a new creative project—any kind of project, from writing a book to designing a new type of semiconductor—one of the better questions to start with is “what do I offer that’s distinct from what’s already available?”

This isn’t always going to be the most vital question: some areas can sustain several near-identical burger joints, for instance, and part of the appeal of some fiction sub-genres is that the books they encompass are similar enough to each other that they all evoke th...