This week I hit that problem that only happens to creatives; someone made my thing.

You know that idea you had for a novel? Someone wrote it. And it happened twice.

It had not been a good week, anyway. Waves hand at… you know… everything.

But yes, I read two books that matched pretty closely ideas I had ages ago for two different novels. I started writing them and stopped at a good way in and threw them away. Trunked them.

The ideas are not exactly the same. A bunch of writers given the exact same prompt will always write different stories.

In Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, she talked about a very specific story idea that winged its way over to her friend’s head. She swore they had not discussed it, but perhaps they both saw the same source material? Or they did talk about it and both forgot? She thinks that an idea will bugger off if it thinks you don’t want it. And she might be right, hey, who am I to argue with Elizabeth Gilbert?

Story will find a way, she intones in a serious Ian Malcolm voice.

And of course, my negative self-talk had an excellent week. There were a lot of shoulds, a lot of if onlys, and a lot of nasty words. I know it doesn’t help, but it’s kind of hard to stop it on those days/weeks where you are struggling with other things.

So that’s my week, how about you?