Paradoxes

A writing student asked me how to be original in the shadow of all the millions of words that have been written already.  My agent, Nathan Bransford, recently blogged on this topic, which gave me some ideas.  I also note that Kelly Fineman blogged about Shakespeare's Sonnet 65, and whenever Shakespeare comes up, I marvel that we are still reading and discussing this guy's work more than 500 years after he wrote it.  Certainly Shakespeare's plots were not particularly original--but something a...