Why even start.

One of the big fears in starting a blog—or any other piece of writing—is that you won’t have anything original to say.  Hasn’t everything already been said?  You’d think so, wouldn’t you?  There are those billion other blogs.  And 147 million items in the Library of Congress with 10,000 more being added each day.  Seneca tells us we lost an estimated 40,000 works when the Library of Alexandria burnt.  Nobody’s quite sure, but that could have been in 48 B.C.  48 B. C., and there were already 40,000 books on the shelves!

How could there possibly be anything new to say?  Why even start? 

Just because every single person is made up of the same building blocks (ever heard of DNA?), so that we can all be traced back to some common ancestress , none of us look exactly alike.  Our fingerprints are different.  Our brainwaves are different.

You and I can start with the same thought and spin them together with all our other thoughts, and the tapestries we weave aren’t going to be identical.  Similar, maybe.  Identical.  No.  (Unless, of course, you plan on plagiarism.  If you do–don’t.)

But, in many ways, it’s time to stop worrying about originality.  “They” say that there are only 8 plots. 

Actually, there are variations on this.  There are three plots.   Twelve.  Twenty.  Thirty-Six.  Whatever.  But when I was in grad school, I would hear, over and over, that there are only 8 plots.  Many years later, in NY, when I began to write, it finally occurred to me to ask someone what those 8 plots were.  Nobody knew!  I’ve since discovered the origin of the dictum and what the 8 plots actually are.   (A good overview of the usual suspects can be found here.)

But, before I found that overview, I spent a good few hours scribbling lists of plots and trying to arrive at the definitive eight.  Along the way, I made a discovery.

There’s only one plot.

So, yeah.  Everything has already been said.

On the other hand, nobody has said it quite the way I will or you can.  So, it’s okay for us all to go ahead and write our own stories.

Stop worrying if your vision
is new.
Let others make that decision.
They usually do.
Just keep moving on.
 — Stephen Sondheim ‘Sunday in the Park with George’

So, we’ll keep moving on.  And tomorrow, I’ll tell you about the one plot.  (Seems like it should have an organ chord, doesn’t it?  And big Gothic lettering.

Tomorrow.

Da-da-da-dah (imagine Beethoven’s Fifth embedded here.)