Write What You Want

They say everything has been written. That nothing is original anymore. But the thing is, even the same story spun by two different minds is still just that- the same story spun by two different minds.

Essentially the way one person tells something will invariably be different than another.

So write the story you want, even if you think or worry that it’s been told before. Because you will have a fresh spin on it.

I had an instance of this with my story April Fish. A couple years back, before Covid changed so much in our world and my little home town lost its newspaper, I had a serial story that ran weekly in the paper. It was called Temerarious Tabias, kinda like Calvin and Hobbes but Hobbes was his bear hat…anyway, one of my shorts was called April Fish and about how the kids in class handed out paper fish instead of gags. And then I just now read Margaret Atwood’s – The Year of The Flood- and I see there’s a whole chapter dedicated to April fish. But here’s the thing- it’s just words strung together and if you google it, there is a thing called April fish in France cuz once more, it’s just words strung together.

Hats what us writers are doing here. Instead of painting tapestries, or sculpting David’s, we’re putting words together as art, hoping desperately someone might connect and understand on the same level as us.

So write what you want, what your heart beats to flesh out, don’t worry about it already being done. Because it’s never been done by you.

Stay wordly,

Norma Rrae