Setting Myself Apart

I haven't started my work for the day, but I did write a few hundred words last night before the bed. It was the grueling death scene. I did somehow manage to spit it out. And while it was just as intense, if not more, as I'd thought it would be, I'm not really happy with the writing. I'm not worried though. I know I'm looking at a full rewrite after I've managed to vomit the story on to the page. 

I came up with this plot idea at the beginning of this year. I'd just about given up on the novel I'd been working on, and wasn't really thinking of jumping back into the game at any point. 

But then I read a book-- by Haruki Murakami- a Japanese author, and for some reason, I longed to write again. I wrote a long journal entry around beliefs and dreams and compromises, and then realized later that it was a bit of a synopsis. 

At the time, I'd been trying to get out of my current situation, so I applied to a fiction writer's retreat in New York. They needed a synopsis of the work I'd been doing while I was there, so I sent them the edited journal entry. 

A few months later, I heard from them-- they loved what I'd sent their way, and while I hadn't been selected, I was on the waiting list. That gave me a bit of confidence, I'll admit. Someone saying that I'd made the shortlist for something I was beginning to believe I had no talent in. 

Before I moved to California, I'd gone on vacation with my boyfriend. There, over a nice Italian meal one day, I confessed to my him that I dreamed of fiction. That I even had a plot idea. And I told him my story.

"Oh, have you seen Sliding Doors?" he asked me.

I hadn't.

"It's somewhat similar to the idea you're describing."

The dreams could have ended there, and they almost did. My great original idea was suddenly not so original anymore. But I came home, I watched the movie, and you know what? While it was similar, it wasn't how I was planning to execute my story. It was going to be nothing like Sliding Doors. Sure, there was going to be that element of a life split apart, but that was pretty much the only similarity my book would have to that movie. I loved the movie, I must say, and it gave me more confidence that my idea was worth following through.

So many people give up when they find that a story they're trying to write has been done in some form or the other. I have once before. But now I've realized that there's absolutely no one who can tell my story the way I would have told it. There's only one me. And that's what makes the difference.