What's the Big Idea?

Let’s say you are looking for the next big idea for a novel. And one day, you’re perusing the paper, or walking around in a museum, or channel surfing, and bam! You come across someone or something pretty darn unusual. Immediately, the wheels turn, the story idea forms… but wait. It’s so different that you think a little research is in order. It wouldn’t do at all for there to be two books on this same unusual topic so you look and look and look and find nothing. Your heart skips a merry little beat as you sit down to write, write, write.

The day comes when it is finished. You type “The End” on the umpteenth revision and you sing a happy ditty as the email wings its way to an editor. And you can hardly believe it when just a week later, you hear back. The editor loves the idea but alas! Another editor down the hall is working on a novel WITH THE SAME UNUSUAL TOPIC.

What will you do? Or as Karl Malden said in that commercial years ago, “WHAT. WILL. YOU. DO?”

If you are Cathy C. Hall, you rant and rave, using language that no refined Southern Lady (or anyone, for that matter) should ever use. Then you decide that the universe is clearly sending a message and so you toast the years you’ve invested in your writing career and as you toss the wine glass into the fireplace, you throw in a couple of not-so-fond farewells: “So long, waking up in the middle of the night to jot down an idea! Au revoir to querying and never hearing back! Adios to endless mind-numbing revisions!” And you stroll into the sunset, older but not necessarily wiser.

Because after a few weeks, I remembered Big Magic, the book by Elizabeth Gilbert wherein she writes about this. This being the creative ideas swirling around all the time in the great ether and that sometimes more than one of us will pull out the same idea and go with it. Which sort of explains how writers or inventors or anyone with a creative thought comes up with what he or she thinks is truly original to find that it’s already been done.

It happens more often than one would think. But when you are a writer and it happens, you, like old Karl, must ask yourself what you will do. And maybe, you’ll answer this question in a more rational manner than I did.

Still, what it comes down to is really rather simple: do you continue or have you had enough? There are options.

You can shelve the manuscript in question and start something new. While you’re waiting to see if your idea and the book that comes out are the same, you’re working. Always a good thing.

OR you can go ahead and send your manuscript out into the world and see what happens. Because if you believe in this idea, and it’s a really good idea, then maybe there’s room in the universe for more than one book on the same idea.

Of course, you can throw in the towel, too. Perhaps this is the straw that broke the camel’s back and enough really is enough. But don’t be surprised one fine midnight (or later) when you wake up and scramble around in the dark to find pen and paper. Because you’ve just had the best big idea ever for your next book.

~Cathy C. Hall

6 comments Big Magic, book ideas, Cathy C. Hall, Elizabeteh Gilbert, novel writing process, perseverance in writing