We are all inspired!

I was doing this thing on, and with First Time Novelist, where I was posting stuff related to writing in general. At the end I’d put up a postscript stating my current progress on the novel. This is that post.

There is this theme of generalisation that does go with post of this sort, something that I have an issue with. I don’t like generalisations. It just reduces all the conversations, the discussions, the complexities to a singularity, a generic statement. It sort of undos all the good work.

Anyways, no work of ours, is absolutely ours. I mean pick up anything. We are taking stuff from others, mixing it with with some of our stuff, and presenting the product as our own. I guess our short life-spans, short, yes, as a race make it inevitable that none of us will be able to put a full-stop to the work we are doing. It will always be continued, modified by somebody else after we are dead. It just is. Take for example the work our scientists do. It is all a collective effort, even inside teams working on the same project, and then the work of one of the teams may be cited by another team. Thats just how it is.

There was a moral dilemma I was facing a couple of weeks before. I am writing a post-apocalyptic something; something because you know less than forty thousand words makes up a novella, more than that a novel. I am sure about the current classification, which for all purposes is a novella; I’m on the eighth chapter, and I’ve maintained on average around two thousand five hundred words per chapter. The dilemma I was facing was this: How do I ensure that what I am writing is, I don’t know original? You know mine? I can already see themes from Stephen King’s The Stand, or AMC’s The Walking Dead appearing in parts. I mean how can I say this is mine?

There was this conversation I was once having with my friend back before I had begun work on this thing I am doing right now. It had centred on the walking dead. I had told him that zombies as they were, were just a prop. We watched, and loved to watch TWD not because of the zombies, I mean yeah all the blood, and bashed heads was fun, but we were not watching it for that! We were watching it for the men, the women, and even the children. We were watching it for the people. We were watching it for their struggles, their stories. Because, at least to me, it was an interesting example of how people could behave in a lawless, society-less society.

And this was what I thought about when I was facing that dilemma. Actually, I thought about the damn vampires!

I mean, we are all continuing something, when we decide to write something, which has already been described before. But then, the phenomenon does not remain important, or of much value, in such a scenario. And yes, in my story, my people are, well, my people.

Wait, does that make any sense?

P.S. If you have been to the about page of the blog, you would have noticed, that there was supposed to be a post on Friday, which did not happen. This is that post. I guess I’d try to be more punctual. Peace.

P.S.S. I love postscripts. If you’ve faced similar dilemmas, I would love to hear your story!