Today's Word: Incredible

From One Word.

The slamming, driving, soaring, bliss-making possibilities of the world made real.

I noticed Tuesday night during writing class that at least two people in class (out of 15) are writing sci-fi novels will pretty much the same premise: Main character dies in the opening, gets machine-revived in a new body, goes off to solve some sort of mystery.

Every story in class is set in Seattle, except for three.

One guy is re-writing "Y: The Last Man." without knowing it. Another guy a couple weeks ago was bemoaning a recent Hollywood film followed his novel idea nearly step for step. Tuesday, a classmate writing a young adult novel was all a-fret over character similiarities in another novel in the genre.

I consoled them, told them their stuff would be different. Maybe the things they had were minor character issues, or were archetypes common in a million other genre stories. I've been here before, felt that icy-grip of pained realization that "yep, my idea is in that guy's novel" or "oh man, that movie just took my idea."

It's taken a couple of years of hard work to get over that hump, and I'm not completely past it. An article yesterday in the New York Times turned my blood into mercury. After a couple minutes of deep breathing, no big detail. Just something else I need to think about as I build the novel. Here's hoping that the media glut will dazzle and distract the readers into thinking everything old is new again.

Speaking of the novel, wrote the end of Chapter 1 last night. The chapter is going to be my submission for the upcoming writing contest. Deadline in 19 days. Feel the burn.