my good idea was so good someone already did it!
I’ve been writing this science fiction short story for a little while, now, and I think I’m about 3/4 finished with the puke draft*. I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction for fun, because that’s where my head is right now (Lightspeed Magazine and the Expanse series have been delightful companions, as was the most recent Twelve Tomorrows) but also for inspiration, because that’s where my head needs to be right now.
So when I’m not actively writing this story, or thinking about what I’m going to write next in it, my brain is kicking around lots of other ideas that I are interesting to me, like What if future humans built a ring around Earth, sort of like Ringworld but smaller, and the story was told from the point of view of the last generation to live on the planet? It turns out that this has already been done, which is both reassuring — Hey! My good idea was so good someone already did it! — and frustrating — Shit! My good idea was so good someone already did it!.
I have learned not to talk about things that are ideas, or share details of works in progress, because it’s a great way to bring the work to a screeching halt for me, but I have this idea for a short story (like, very short, just a couple thousand words) that I like so much, I have just decided right now in this very instant that I will not reveal what the idea is, and will instead write it out and make it a story.
So now this is a much shorter and less interesting post than I thought it was going to be when I started.
*The puke draft, as defined by my friend and mentor Amy Berg (who created both my role on Leverage and Eureka), is the draft you write first, where you just puke up everything onto the page, without stopping to fix stuff or redo stuff. I add to this the following: you go all the way through until the story is done, and then you can go back and start washing away the puke to leave behind the yummy undigested morsels of delicious story.
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The "puke draft" is great phrase for a rough draft! When I write I have so many ideas floating around in my head that I need to just write it down or it will gnaw away at me. I can change the idea or totally ditch it later, but at the moment the ideas need to be artistically expressed. I also feel this way when I am drawing, painting, or other art mediums. It is like my creative side has been suppressed for so long that it needs to escape and create.
I feel like a lot of the times ideas float in the ether and people (especially in the same area) inhale those ideas at the same time. Some people are just faster at materializing them.
You should hang around /r/writing. One of the things the more experienced writers try to drill into the less experienced writers is that ideas mean precisely nothing. Your execution is all that matters. So if you find out that someone has already written about your particular idea, you'll still have a different take on it because you're a different person with a different thought process and different life experiences. You'll come at the idea from a different angle. I wrote my first novel and had it out for months before realizing that The Leftovers had already covered the basic conceit - that a mass disappearance of people occurs. Beyond that idea, though, they're completely different books with completely different characters, themes, and settings.
Write the story, then let the editors worry about whether or not it's too similar to something else to be published. What matters is you wrote it.
I enjoy reading your blog. Right now I've got to tell you I had a hate/like/love relationship with Chaos. My favorite episode was the two groups working together. You were awesome as Chaos.
