Are There Any Original Ideas Left? – WN 042

This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 42: Are There Any Original Ideas Left?

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m your host, Sarah Werner, and I’m actually podcasting from a new and undisclosed location. One of the wonderful things about podcasting, and this is very similar to writing, is that it’s so eminently portable. Just like when you write, you can take a pad of paper and a pencil or a pen or a laptop or whatever it is you use to write to a coffee shop, to the lunch room at your work, on an airplane, wherever you are, you can write.

It’s a little bit more limited, but podcasting also is quite portable. And so I just have this little tote full of my microphone and my curved piece of audio foam, which podcast listeners, Sean Locke refers to as my tube of podcasting. And my headphones and a towel in my laptop and that’s everything. And it’s just in my little tote and I tote it around with me. And so I say this because I’m really hoping that today’s recording will not be plagued by the normal cars going up the hill, motorcycles, shrieking children, fighting cats, and chainsaws in the graveyard behind my house. So either it’ll be nice and quiet or we’ll be plagued by all sorts of fun new sounds. I just realized that there are some wind chimes outside of the window that I’m looking at. I’m still in South Dakota, which is on the prairie, which is extremely windy. So every once in a while, if you hear a soft, melodic chiming sound, it’s not my phone, it’s not electronic, it is actually some wind chimes that are being stirred about outside my window.

So all of that is a wonderfully unnecessary explanation that precedes, hopefully, what will be a very necessary talk about a subject that I think a lot of people think about and spend time worrying about and considering. And that is the concept of how original our ideas need to be in order to write and sell a book. So we’re going to talk about that in just a minute, but before we jump into that, I want to share with you an email I received from podcast listener Abra, and she writes, “Hi, Sarah. I just discovered your podcast and I love it. I’m not sure if it’s going to kick me out of my non-writing decade, but it answers a lot of questions. Some, I didn’t even know I had. The only drawback to the fact that I love it is that I can’t listen it while I work because I miss bits. And when I realize this, I go back to listen to what I missed and I worry I missed things and not even realized them. You get the idea. Anyway, thank you for the effort and consideration you put into this.”

Abra, thank you so much. I love that the biggest problem with my podcast is the fact that you have to listen to it multiple times. Just thank you for saying that. I’m glad that you found this valuable and useful. And I really hope that if this doesn’t kick you out of your decade of non-writing, I hope that you kick yourself out. That sounds really bad, but you know what I mean? Everything we do, we do because we make a choice. And it’s my hope for you that you make the choice to start writing again. And in fact, I think even writing that email to me was maybe even a small first step. So best of luck to you, Abra. Thank you so much for writing in, and I hope that you continue to write.

So today’s subject about the originality of our ideas is kind of meta. And I say this because it came to me from a podcast listener named Teresa who wrote in an excellent question. I love that we’re to the point now where listeners are sending in ideas for topics that are even better than the ones that I had planned, so thank you so much. I reached out to Teresa and she was willing to let me read her question to you. And so I’m going to share that with you now. And I think that it’ll speak to you because it’s something that a lot of writers struggle with and don’t necessarily maybe know that they’re struggling with consciously, or maybe just have an admitted that they’re struggling with it to themselves.

So here’s Teresa’s question. Teresa writes, “Hi, Sarah. First off, I just wanted to say how much I love your podcast. I started listening this past February and it has made me excited about writing and has spurred me to begin the novel I always have wanted to write. One thing I found in this whole process is that what I once believed to be an original idea for my book, I start to see everywhere. There seems to be so many books coming out of the woodwork that have the same theme or premise of the one I’m trying to write. Do you think that this is because of the whole yellow car dilemma? That is once your attention is called to them, you start to see yellow cars everywhere. And since I’m sensitive to the topic, my mind immediately goes to, ‘Hey, that’s like mine,’ or is it simply the fact, the great minds think alike? Assuming you and others may be going through similar ordeals, how do you not become discouraged when writing your now unoriginal, as you may consider it, idea?”

Theresa, I think I’ve said it a couple times now, but that is a great question. And I hope that I have an equally great answer for you. Well, I certainly have a long and involved answer for you, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily the same thing. I think that original ideas are very important to writers because we are first and foremost creators. And when think about creating, we’re not thinking about recreating, we’re thinking about birthing something new. And this is important to us for, I think a lot of reasons and some of them may be conscious and some of them may be unconscious.

So for me, I like to be original. I like knowing that I’m the first person to have thought of something. And this is because somewhere deep down, it fulfills my need to accomplish something, to live out a purpose. I like to know that I’m the first person to have had a particular idea or to have provided a particular solution because it means that I’m necessary. If I can come up with something that no one else has been able to come up with, to some degree it validates the reason that I’m here on this planet. It validates me as a creator, as an author, as a writer. We like to feel needed. We like to feel purposeful.

And I know if you identify as a writer or even if you don’t identify as a writer and you simply love to write, we tend to equate our writing accomplishments or what we do with our writing to our worth as a person. I feel like this is an entirely separate topic for another podcast episode, this idea of self-worth and especially self-worth for writers. But I just want to let you know that having an original idea or not having an original idea for your writing does not validate you as a person and does not devalue or devalidate, unvalidate. I don’t even know what the word would be. But what I want to say is, I know that we feel a need to create wholly, new and original ideas, but your self-worth and your worth as a writer and a storyteller and a creator does not rely simply on your ability to come up with new and original ideas.

I want you to know that, but more than that, I want you to believe it. While your purpose on this earth may be to write and to be a writer, you are not any less of a person or you are not any less of a writer and you will not fail to have an impact on your readers and your audience if you don’t have an original idea. You have worth, you have value. I know this podcast encourages you to write, but even if you’re not writing, you still have worth and value as a person. Okay, I’m going to get off my high preachy horse there.

So I think that’s why we feel this pressure to have original ideas, because we want to know that we’ve contributed something new, that we mattered in this grand history and spectrum of literature. Now, I know the question that you’re asking is, “Well, Sarah, is it possible? Are there new ideas?” And I’m going to get to that in just a moment. See, I’m creating some tension here. First. I want to address a couple of the points that Teresa brought up about why sometimes you think you have this amazing, original idea and you’re like, “Holy crap. I just came up with the best thing ever,” and then you start to see it everywhere.

I actually have had this happen a number of times, and it’s not even limited to writing. Like I had this great idea for something and I was like, “Oh man, I totally invented this.” And then had somebody inform me that it already had been invented and they sent me the link to it on Amazon. And I was like, “Ah, but I totally had that idea. I invented it without knowing that it already existed. Don’t I get some kind of credit here?” And the answer is, no, you don’t. You don’t get credit for it if it’s already been invented.

And maybe that also speaks to something that we want. In addition to our need to have purpose, maybe we just want to be recognized for something. Maybe we want to have our moment in the sun and for people to look at us and say, “Wow, that Sarah.” “That Teresa.” “That Dave.” “That so-and-so, they really had a great idea.” I mean, who wouldn’t want that set about them, right? We’re all little vein on the inside, it’s okay. I know I blush and glow with pride when somebody says something nice about me. It’s one of the great things about being a person in a community, is that we uplift each other. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be uplifted or to be given credit for a cool idea that you came up with.

So to answer Teresa’s question about why this happens. I’m going to say a couple things. First, we do live in a community slash society slash culture and no matter how introverted we may be, no matter how much we writers may get away or run away or hide or close ourselves in our little offices or our writing rooms or our closets or bedrooms or basements or wherever it is you write, we belong to something greater than ourselves, something that’s made up of a lot of other people. And this community, this body of people, has a shared heritage of story and so that means we have similar influences. So maybe while everybody didn’t grow up reading a certain book, say Romeo and Juliet, that’s part of our shared culture and it’s something that we’re familiar with. It’s a story that we’re familiar with and things that we’re familiar with influence us.

So Teresa asked, “The reason I keep seeing this happening is this just because great minds think alike?” And I think to a degree, yes, because we have a shared history and a shared lore and a shared background. Whether those stories are fictional or non-fictional, we all know about certain sets of events and sometimes those events and those stories can plant seeds within us and those seeds germinate into ideas. And it’s very, very possible that an event or a story sparks a very similar seed in two different people. I don’t have a degree in psychology or sociology and so I can’t tell you the degree to which we are influenced or the astounding effect that our society and culture have on us. Even everyone’s seeing the same television commercial may bring us two similar story ideas.

And so yes, great minds think alike because of our social influences perhaps. And perhaps fortunately, perhaps unfortunately, what other people choose to write about, the ideas that other people have, we have pretty much zero control over these things. Unless we’re kidnapping writers and keeping them in our basements, misery style, we really can’t keep other people who have ideas from acting on them or using them or writing about them. So I want to focus today on the things that we can effect. Once again, I am not advocating kidnapping other writers who have similar ideas and keeping them in your basement, please do not do that. I want to be very clear so that I’m not implicated later if you decide to do that, but please don’t decide to do that. That’s not cool.

Teresa also asked about yellow car syndrome, which was actually something that I wasn’t familiar with as a Thing with a capital T. But now that I think about it, yes, that’s something that happens all the time. My good friend, Chris introduced me to the word wheelhouse, which I’d never heard of before. Apparently it’s some kind of sports term. But he asked what kind of skill, like if a certain skill, was in my wheelhouse. And I was like, that’s a dumb sounding word. But then that very week I heard the word wheelhouse be used three other times. It was amazing. I don’t know why that happens and it’s the same thing that Teresa talks about with the yellow car. If you’re like, “Oh man, I totally want to buy a yellow car because they’re super unique and sporty and fun. And nobody else has one.” It’s pretty much guaranteed that the next time you go out, you’re going to start seeing yellow cars everywhere.

And once again, just like the great minds think alike thing, this is not something that is within your control. Like you can’t go around stealing or blowing up other yellow cars that you see because you want your yellow car to be the only one. Once again, that’s not okay. So this is something I think that we have to make our peace with, is the fact that there are 9 billion people on this planet. Some of us are bound to buy the same car or invent the same invention or have the same idea and we can’t control those other however many billion people, 9 billion minus one. What we do have control over and what we can affect is our own output, what we’re creating, what we are writing.

And that’s really what I want to talk about today. Because while we can’t stop what other people are doing and creating, sadly, we can stop ourselves. We can stop ourselves from creating something really great because we’re afraid that it might be the same as something else that somebody has already created or that somebody else is working on. And when that happens, the only person that you’re really hurting is yourself. So we can’t stop others from having similar ideas, but we can stop ourselves from creating something really great fulfilling. So don’t let it get to you.

I know that’s kind of like blah advice, like, “Oh, just don’t let it bother you,” but really don’t let it bother you. Let it roll off your back, like water off of a duck. Or as I said in episode 30, let it go. Let it be one of those things that you let go of. And instead of focusing on what everyone else is creating, focus on what you need to create, get it done, get it out there. I think I’ve said before, that done is better than perfect. And I’ll amend that slightly today to say, done is better than completely original. But that still doesn’t answer the question, are there any original ideas left? My answer to that is, yes. Absolutely and I’ll go into why in just a second.

First, I want to address the folks who say, “Nope, there’s no new ideas. There’s nothing new out there. We’ve invented it all already.” Or they’ll say, “Well, yeah, you might think that’s new, but if you rip it apart at a molecular level, you’ll see that it’s really just a remix of idea A and idea B, which were invented a long, long time ago.” And maybe there’s even some merit to this.

If you look at the movies that Hollywood is making, it’s all dark, gritty, reboots of superhero movies and reboots of movies from the 1980s and 1970s. And if you let yourself get into that mindset, then I think that, yeah, it can really seem like there’s no new ideas left. But I would challenge you, and I would challenge Hollywood for crying out loud, don’t be lazy. Oh my gosh. I know it sounds like I’m being super mean right now, but you don’t need to remake movies that already exist. Like they exist, just let them exist unless you can do it way better and that very rarely happens in my opinion. But I’m a huge snob, so, I guess there you go. There’s new ideas. You just got to think of them.

I’ve said it before, I am a possibility addict. I’m so addicted to the idea that there’s so much possibility in this world that we have not latched onto because we’re so busy staring at our phones or our belly buttons or our knees. There are ideas that haven’t been born yet. I really truly believe that. But again, you do get people who say, “Oh, there’s nothing new under the sun.” And I’d heard that phrase before and I was like, “Oh, that’s Shakespeare.” And so I Googled it because I wanted to make sure I had the context for it and what came up actually surprised me.

It is actually a verse from the Bible. It is from Ecclesiastes, chapter one, verse nine and I’ll actually read you a small selection around it, so you can have a little bit of context. So it says, “All things are wearisome. Man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. That which has been, is that which will be. And that which has been done, is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, see this, it is new. Already it has existed for ages, which were before us. There is no remembrance of earlier things and also of the later things which will occur. There will be for them no remembrance among those who will come later still.”

All right, so that is really depressing. I mean, right.? It’s essentially this lament, it speaks to this futility of the human race to ever really advance or ascend and that anything we will do will soon be forgotten. Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon who was by all accounts, a pretty wise dude. So say that’s true, say there’s nothing new on this earth. That doesn’t mean that we’ve discovered everything on this earth. We find and discover new things about our planet every day. We discover new insects, new plants, new illnesses. We develop new technologies using resources and materials that are on this earth. I feel like this invites a larger conversation about where ideas actually come from. But along that same vein, I think there’s a matter of the material and the immaterial and I think that most people would agree with me that ideas are immaterial. So can they really count as things under the sun?

So after I looked this up and found that it was a verse from Ecclesiastics, it still really bothered me because I so, so, so much very thought that this was a quote from Shakespeare. I did some searching and it turns out that this very line from Ecclesiastes is quoted in Shakespeare Sonnet Number 59. The reason I was so hung up on there being a Shakespeare connection here was that I wanted to make the point that Shakespeare is very well-known for writing his plays in three sort of types. He had his comedies, histories, and tragedies, but he still managed to give us some wildly original ideas within those genres. And so I think that he explores a little bit of that in his interpretation of Ecclesiastes in Sonnet 59, which I will read to you right now.

This is one of the sonnets that often they make you read in high school. And while you’re reading it, they make you write the little iambic pentameter feet on it. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to do that, but I did. And so I’ll try to read it without horribly stressing the iambic pentameter, which is the meter in which the sonnet is written.

Sonnet 59, “If there be nothing new but that which is has been before, how are our brains beg beguiled. Which, laboring for invention, bear amiss. The second burthen of a former child. O, that record could with a backward look. Even of five hundred courses of the sun, Show me your image in some antique book. Since mind at first in character was done. That I might see what the old world could say To this composed wonder of your frame. Whether we are mended, or where better they. Or whether revolution be the same. O, sure I am, the wits of former days. To subjects worse have given admiring praise.”

So basically, and I’m about as close to a Shakespeare expert as I am to being a theologian and so I’m just going to advise you to take this with a grain of salt. But Sonnet 59, very much like Ecclesiastes chapter one verse nine, is sort of lamenting the human condition where we labor so hard to bring forth ideas. Or as Shakespeare put it, to bear child that has already been born. And I think that’s speaks to Teresa’s frustration. We come up with these ideas and we put so much time and energy and hard work and labor into bringing them forth, only to discover that it’s already been done. But I don’t want to join in Shakespeare’s lament. Maybe this really puts me in a losing position, but I’m going to oppose the idea that there are no new or original ideas. Partially because, as I’ll talk about in a second, I think that there are new ideas. But also because I don’t want to believe that the human race is just spinning in a hamster wheel, running forward, running forward, and not really ever going anywhere or doing anything or living lives of meaning.

Once again, you don’t need to have an original idea for your life to have meaning, but at the same time, I want to know that we’re not just spinning in circles waiting to die, because that is extremely bleak. And I don’t think that that’s what life is about. So these naysayers who say that there is nothing new under the sun and that every story told is just a repeating of the original three or five or however many original Greek storylines, the comedy, the tragedy, the history. People that say we can’t develop stories outside of the traditional three act or five act structure or that we can’t develop successful stories outside of these bounds, I don’t believe that’s true.

While there might be no new things under the sun, which if you think about it in that way is true because we have what we have. Unless a meteor comes crashing in from outer space and gives us new material to work with, we’ve got all of the minerals and water that we’re going to have on this earth. We’ve got all the raw materials. What are we going to do with those raw materials? And this is I think, where those new ideas come in. This is where human ingenuity comes in. This is where somebody says, “I’m going to make a microchip.” “I’m going to make an airplane.” “I’m going to make a teleporting device.” “I’m going to write a story where the inside of the house is larger than the outside of the house and it’s going to be a non-linear narrative. And I’m going to call it House of Leaves. And I’m going to come up with something entirely new.”

I wonder if the same people who say every new story is really just a remix of old ideas, if they would simply say that an airplane is not a new invention, but simply a remix of the metal and the oil and everything else that already existed and that it’s no big deal. I think to say that discredits human ingenuity. I think to say that discredits what our brains are capable of. And I think it’s a load of crap. There’s a lot to be said here about the purity of art and the sliding scale from say a band that does covers of existing songs using existing instruments, to a musical group that invents their own instruments and invents a new way of writing music and invents completely new music with which it is written.

I’m not talking about the purity of art. I’m talking about the fact that you should not be discouraged when people tell you there is nothing new under the sun, when people tell you that there are no new ideas. Because people have been saying that for years and we just keep on inventing awesome new stuff. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, human beings are inherently creative. We can’t help it. We make stuff. Whether it’s new ice cream flavors, new flying contraptions, hand pressed, hand lettered books, we make stuff. It’s what we do. And I refuse to believe that we’re done making new things.

So no, all of the original ideas are not taken. I think that there are so many new and amazing ideas to be had. It just sometimes takes work to get them. It’s very easy for Hollywood, and I’m going to personify Hollywood. It’s very easy for Hollywood to sit down and say, “Eh, what’s selling well? Reboots of intellectual properties from the eighties, all right, that’ll make a ton of money. Ready, set, go.” Just because that’s happening, doesn’t mean that there aren’t amazingly smart and inventive people out there with amazing ideas. Those people just have trouble getting funding. I mean, if you want to talk about sad truths, do you know how hard it is to have and nurture and spread a new idea?

While human beings have amazing creative potential, we also tend to get comfortable with what we know or what we think we know because learning is hard. And I’m saying this as somebody who probably could be learning a new language in my free time, but I’m not because sometimes we just get tired and that’s also okay. Relaxing is good and healthy and something that I need to tell myself a lot. But people can be resistant to change, and society as a whole, like not individual people, but cultures and societies as a whole tends to be resistant to change. And so spreading new ideas, especially if they are about societal change can be very, very difficult and it can be difficult for the people who have these ideas to spread and share them in an increasingly technological society where everybody has a megaphone and very little inclination to listen.

So we’ve talked about great minds thinking alike. We’ve talked about the influences that help birth our ideas and the reasons why other people might have similar ideas. We’ve talked about the yellow car dilemma, which I love and I’m going to keep using that phrase if that’s okay with you Teresa? We’ve talked about the phenomenon that once we’re aware of something, and once we’re focused on it, we do tend to see it a lot more often out in the world. These are things that we cannot affect. We cannot stop other people from creating, but we can choose whether we stop what we’re creating or whether we keep on going with what we’re creating. Obviously, I’m in the camp of keep on going with what you’re creating.

We also talked about the fact that, yes, I think there are new ideas, but maybe that’s even not what’s important right now because a novel or a book or a story or a poem, that’s more than just an idea. It’s more than just a premise or a concept or a theme. A story has an idea. There is an idea involved with story, but there’s also a plot and storytelling and character and art and execution and skill and talent and the placement of word after word. So really when we’re talking about creating something new, an idea is actually a very small part of that creation. And again, I want to hammer home the thought that better done than perfect, better done than original, better done than abandoned, than a would be writer sitting idly by feeling resentful that they never got to write their story.

Now I said that being original, being creative, having ideas takes work, and this is true. But there’s the other side of this, where we can work too hard on just the idea and to neglect those other elements of storytelling and plot and voice and character and art and execution and completion. There are all sorts of stories and novels that are very high concept and sometimes those work and sometimes they don’t. But what I want to caution you against here is focusing solely on the idea behind the work. Because often when that happens, a lot of the other elements that make a great story get neglected and it can make for a less than enjoyable reading experience.

I’m sure that you’ve seen this before. You can kind of tell that the author is like trying too hard to be clever or to be original or smart and the whole thing just ends up being kind of contrived. So my advice to you while you’re writing ends up being, even if someone else has a similar idea to what you have, that doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, the idea, the premise, is such a small part of the story, of the experience, as a whole. So even if someone else has a similar theme or promise to you, I want you to remember that you are unique. No one else has your voice, your method, your skill, your talent. No one else is going to tell that story in exactly the way that you are or that you can. No one can write your story, except for you. No one can create that experience, but you. The world needs your story and you are the only person who can tell it.

Finally, one last note about originality and that is there is room in the world for more than one book about subject X or ideal Y or theme Z. I know when I read a book about something that I’m really interested in or that I really care about, I want to read more just like it when I’m done and often the author has not written more. This happened especially when I was finished reading Elizabeth Peter’s Vicky Bliss Mystery Series. There’s just five or six books. It’s a very short series, but I wanted more and there weren’t any more. And so I started searching for like mystery adventures, with romance, with a sort of saucy male thief counterpart, and there’s a very limited number of books where that happens. And I can go back and reread those, but I think there’s room for more than one of that type of book in the world. So please remember that as well.

Teresa, thank you so much for writing in with an excellent question about original ideas. If you are listening right now and you have your own question that you’d like me to answer on the show, you can get in touch with me a couple of ways. You can send an email to hello@sarahwerner.com. That’s H-E-L-L-O@sarahwerner.com. You can also visit my website, S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. Navigate over to the contact tab and fill out the little form that’s there. It’ll ask you for your name, your email, and a message.

I just feel really awkward right now. I feel like I’ve never said any of this before, which is weird because this is my 42nd episode and I’ve done this a lot. Gosh, maybe it’s the new setting. I’m in a new place and so I don’t have my usual context around me and so everything’s different. Anyway, I’m here for you. Get in touch, keep in touch, et cetera.

Another great way to keep in touch with Write Now Podcast is to subscribe to my email newsletter. You can do that by going to my website, sarahwerner.com and there’s a black bar at the very top of my website where you can enter your email address. Otherwise, if you scroll all the way to the bottom of my website, there’s a little pop-up that says, “Hey, I like you. Sign up for my email mailing list.” Alternately, you can go to my contact page and sign up there. There’s a link. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Special thanks for this episode today also go out to my wonderful and generous Patreon supporters. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform where you give a certain amount of money per podcast episode to the Write Now Podcast. Donations can vary from 50 cents an episode to a dollar an episode to $500 an episode, whatever you are moved to give. There is a link to Patreon in today’s show notes. Otherwise, you can go out to patreon.com, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com and search for the Write Now podcast. If you are short on cash, as a lot of writers tend to be, you can also help support this podcast just by sharing it with other people. And so if you have a friend, a coworker, a relative who is an aspiring writer and could use the encouragement and inspiration this podcast provides, please let them know about it. Have them listen to an episode and see if it’s right for them. That would be awesome.

Speaking of my Patreon supporters, I would like to give special thanks today to official cool cat, Sean Locke. Official bookworms, Matthew Paulson and Rebecca Werner. Official rad dude, Andrew Coons, and several other patrons who wish to remain anonymous. You are all, as I say every single episode, amazing. And with that, this has been episode 42 of the Write Now Podcast. The podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I am Sarah Werner, and I believe that you have the potential to come up with some amazing ideas.