Writing Report August 22, 2020

I’ll be frank, I felt a little discouraged the other day.

There’s a lot going on around the house recently (all good, but time consuming) and it’s been digging into my writing time, which is especially trying since the story I’m currently working on requires some intricate plotting.

It’s based on a long established trope, but the trope has been used so long and so often by so many that it’s practically a sub-genre unto itself.

In any case, while taking a break from house stuff and writing, I read a short story published in the last decade or so by a Well Known Writer…

…and was floored to see a lot of the ideas I planned to use appearing in their story.

I was, as we used to say back in the 60s, bummed out.

Gave serious thought to abandoning the story (‘cuz lord knows there’s plenty of other projects I could move to).

But I got to thinking about the other writer’s story and my story and the trope we both used, and I realized that even when I started noodling together ideas for this story, I was aware of other, better known stories using the same trope by Even More Well Known Writers and then I realized that while I used said trope, it was really just a convenient shorthand to get into a discussion about something entirely different, and so…

…and so…

…and so…I realized I should continue apace with my story, because whatever similarities exist between it and other stories would be there regardless and there’s no point pretending they won’t.

But it cost me an evening of productivity as I moped about.

So now:
Back to work, slacker!

© Buzz Dixon