We've all thought it, which just goes to show maybe there are no more truly novel things to say.
Maybe it's all been said?
If you are a writer, this is one very loud mouth on the multi-headed hydra that is Imposter Syndrome: the head of I Don't Have Any Original Ideas.
What is the point of writing if it's all been said? Why clutter up the landscape with redundancy? Isn't that what we do with editing? Whittle away the excess?
What if there is no point to what I am writing because someone else said it better and earlier?
I was thinking about this this evening and would like to offer an alternative take.
Perhaps what we think of as redundant is actually the result of the commonalities in the human experience. The great themes of literature are very large. They are experiences we all have. Aspects of our human experience are common to us all. That is what we respond to in a really well-written combination of words.
How many stories can there be about betrayal or love? How many poems can there be about nature or grief? The answer is not a finite number. We do not stop telling the stories or composing the poems because the themes have already been covered. There is enough room to express betrayal and love, nature and grief in unique ways each and every time. There are the overlays of personality, time, culture, gender, writing style, genre, language, level of formality, geography, ...there are literally millions of ways to reinterpret themes. By virtue of the fact that we are all individuals, then odds are there is originality in what we have to say.
I'm not talking about remakes, although some of those can even turn out well, given enough time or distance between the original and the reimagined version. I'm also not saying plagiarism is a good idea --don't do that. What I mean is that you should write what you are drawn to write. Do not worry about originality.
With this blog post, I have not cut off the hydra's I Don't Have Any Original Ideas head. I've read the original of that story and know it turns out to be problematic. In my version, the creature's jaw gets wired shut --or there's always duct tape. Back in the days of the Ancient Greeks, they didn't have duct tape. Now, we do. It's not an original story, but it is new.
Happy writing.