Saturday 15 June 2013

I know who is to blame

I've finally figured it out.

I know exactly who is to blame.

Let me clarify that. Being creative in this day and age is not easy. There's so much that's already been done. It's really difficult to come up with something completely fresh and new.

I think it's like that in a lot of different areas. Music for instance. When I listen to new songs, I'm always thinking "It sounds just like this" or "It sounds just like that". There are so many great songs that have already been written that writing new ones just gets harder and harder.

It's just the same with stories. How do you come up with an idea for a story that's fresh and new when so many stories have already been written? I'm sure that whatever I write, there's always going to be someone who has the same reactions to my stories as I've described above to new songs. It seems to me that with each subsequent generation, as more stories continue to be written, it just gets harder and harder to come up with new ones.

Sometimes it used to really get me down. I'd get so frustrated. It just didn't seem fair that I was living in an age where so many things had already been done, and so many stories had already been written.

And that's when I realised exactly whose fault it was.

It's time's fault. I think that's clear. Thanks to time, I'm forced to be living in a later period than all those other writers who got in before me. If time was a little more flexible, maybe I could sneak back and get my stories out first. But no, time has to be strict and linear and one way only, leaving me stuck right where I am.

Of course, recognising a problem is one thing. Dealing with it is another. What can I do against this unfair behaviour by time? For a while I thought about maybe suing time - taking it to court for infringing my freedom of expression. But I had a funny feeling I wouldn't get far with that one. I considered the options of relocating to a different universe where the laws of time are a bit less rigid, but I just couldn't face the stress of packing and moving again.

So I guess I'm stuck with the situation as is. There's nothing I can do against the random unfairness of time. I'll just keep badgering away, hoping against hope that I can come up with that truly original idea.

And if anybody out there should develop a time machine, please drop me a line.