Stubborn

Flying back home, I chatted with a couple that were beginning their vacation. The man saw that I was reading and interrupted to ask what the book was about, then after the conversation maundered to writing, he told me that there weren't any original ideas.

A horrible thought, because after all, he was exactly right. There aren't any original ideas; not in the context of the point he was making. All stories have beginnings and ends, conflicts and resolutions, love and death with fighting in-between. I even helped him prove his point, since Treasure Island was just a story about pirates, and pirates existed long before Stevenson wrote about them.

And then he asked me why I'd want to write; what satisfaction could I possibly get from creating unoriginal stories?

Once again, he was right. Most writers don't actually make a living from it. Like Kafka, he didn't write anything publicly acknowledged as brilliant until well after his death. So what, then, is the attraction? Vanity, ego, the desire to be remembered?

No. The truth is, there aren't any original ideas, and we write to prove otherwise.