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RE: The Greatest "Fiction" Ever Written Is More True Than Authors Admit
I am a fledgling writer with fledgling uncertainties and urges. This post floats my boat! How wonderful to hear the big guys - the real writers - put into words the cogs and the knacks in process that I understand only vaguely.
Whatever originality is, you can tell when it isn't there. I've said something like this before for a number of my passions - math, cooking, music, and acting. They all occasionally send me to a unexpected place, and it's for those journeys that I put up with the rest.
Thanks for this. It gives me hope and the urge to go feel frustrated as hell for as long as it takes for a story to emerge.
Your story will emerge - and it'll be the best butterfly in the garden when it does! Originality is less about the plot, more about the characters and their diction and their personal eccentricities. The journeys to unexpected places are what keep readers buying books. As for understanding the mechanics of writing, that's like expecting all car drivers to know how to identify the cause of a dead engine and then knowing how to replace an alternator, a starter, a battery, a serpentine belt... pistons, spark plugs... just rev up and the engine and ride!