It's in the Cosmos

Have you ever noticed that ideas seem to occur to everyone at the same time? Like the year they had two volcano movies, and the next year when they had two asteroid movies. (I'm not sure about the chronological order, so feel free to set me straight...See? I've been reduced to begging for comments.) Last night my daughter was watching the Lion King, and I realized it was the same plot as the current book I'm reading. Not that there's anything wrong with it. It happens all the time. Depending on whose theory one ascribes to, there are only seven, or three, or one plot out there with which to write our stories. Think about it. How many stories are there about an orphaned child who lives with guardians who don't like him/her? Let's see: Cinderella, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Harry Potter, Annie, and on and on. Right now I'm brainstorming ideas for my next novel, and I've came up with an idea for the heroine, only to discover the same backstory information in "By the Waters of Babylon" by Stephen Vincent Benet. (My story has a totally different plot, but the same set up.) This is one of the phenomena I love about writing; if you give twenty people the same idea, you should get twenty different stories from it. (Unless one of the writers is a plagiarist, but that's a whole different monster.)

My current reads are: The Runaway Duke, Goddess for Hire, a bunch of short stories: "The Lottery," "One Thousand Dollars," "By the Waters of Babylon," "A Rose for Emily," and "A Sound of Thunder" (Hey, I've read them before, but I have to refresh my memory before I can teach them to my students).

--Gabi
Read an excerpt of my latest novel, Temptation's Warrior, at
www.gabianderson.com