Being a 'hack' and being okay with it...

One of the hardest things about being a writer is overcoming the need to be unique and different. We all want to be the original, be the first of a kind, the O.G. Iceberg Slim of writing. But the reality is simple and often hard to stomach:

Every book has already been written. 

You might be saying, "Well screw you, what would you know about it!". 

Well, my first real disappointment in writing was this truth, I had to acknowledge that nothing I would ever write will be original. It would always resemble something I had seen or read. I fought this truth with every fiber of my being. 

Queue up the wobbly montage...

I was working as a dishwasher back in my hometown. It had been a long night, I worked from five to eleven, a shorter shift. But it was my second job, and my second shift that day. I was ready to finish my day and go home. I changed out of my dish scrubs, as always they were a mess, soaked through with soap, left overs, and dishwater. I was wet, I was tired, and I was a cranky. It was the end of week and the whole kitchen were going out drinking. So, despite my stiff joints and wet jeans, I went with them. Thankfully I did, it was worth the lesson.

While we were there I struck up a conversation with the sous chef. He was a little older than me, a little more disillusioned than me. Like me, he had other dreams too, he wanted to be a movie director. That night we had a conversation that changed the way I write. We got to talking about storytelling and the different mediums of doing it. I told him I wanted to be a writer and he nodded but didn't say anything. As the conversation progressed he asked me what I had written. I told him about various short stories and some novel concepts, I was saving the best for last. I boasted that I had a real original story, one that no one else had (at the time I was writing the first draft of "Patchwork Indigo"). I thought he would be amazed with it. He was not. 

After I finished talking about it, he immediately crushed my dream. He was not impressed, and told me that I had ripped off several of his favorite movies. Then he proceeded to give examples and how I had stolen other people's work. And I realized, whether I had stolen anything or not, it looked that way.

So I got really drunk that night, sad, alone drunk. 

The next day I almost threw away my writing and quit. I didn't, I put it all in storage, and I stopped writing for a year. 

I didn't stop reading however. In fact I read more and more, and eventually started seeking out books that directly mirrored, or stole from other books (A good example of a story that has a million and one rip-offs is Homer's The Iliad). I was looking for an excuse to write again, despite the fact that I would never be original. I argued a lot with myself during that time. I argued that I could be original, the answer was always the same, "it's not likely!". 

But along the way I discovered something, something very important, more important than the lesson; it didn't matter. 

I also realized the sous chef had been a hater. All the movies he loved were rip-offs of each other. Some didn't even guise the fact that they stole from each other. That didn't make them bad movies, in some cases both were excellent stories with good acting, dialogue, special effects and so on. What it translated as, despite the truth in it, was that he didn't want to see me successful (but that is another rule for another time). He was brutal, he was mean, and he wanted to tear me down, but he was also the truth. 

So, I started writing again under the assumption that I would be looked at as a hack and a rip-off artist, that people would assume I had stolen my work, that was not the case. People don't care, they want to read something they identified with, something that made them think, an adventure, etc. They wanted to read it even if they have read it before. 

All this leads me to rule number two. 

Rule number 2: Almost all stories have already been told, it's just the nature of storytelling. Forgive yourself for not being original. Write anyway, tell an old story a new way, combine older things to make newer things, and revive old forgotten stories. But don't stop writing, Much like travel, the joy is not in the arrival, but in the journey. 

Cheers!