One piece of advice most writing books make is that a new writer should familiarize themselves with their chosen genre so they don’t repeat worn out tropes and ideas. (And they were named Adam and Eve…) After a few decades of reading and writing in a genre you arrive at a different place. You get to that spot where all the landscape has been surveyed. You haven’t read every single work but you have a pretty good idea what’s been done, who the innovators were, who is imitating who, and you ask yourself: “What have I got to offer this genre that hasn’t been done before?”
I stand at such a point with fantastic literature.
I laugh when I recall the twelve year old who discovered the Barsoom books of Edgar Rice Burroughs in the Dawson Creek library. These were the old Ballantines with the horribly small print and the weird Gino D’Achilles covers. I remember looking at the weird four-armed ape attacking a red-skinned Martian on The Mastermind of Mars and thinking I would never be able to read, let alone write, something so good. It was an actual ache in my heart to be able to do so.
If you’d like to read the rest, please check out Monster 2: From the Pages of Dark Worlds Quarterly.
I dunno…I think that more often than not, a writer stumbles upon the creation of a brand new genre rather than it being crafted and designed. I’ve got friends who have told me that they’re not going to write or publish anything until and unless they can come up with something entirely new and original. As a consequence they’ve never written or published anything.
But you can’t go by me. I’m a square from way back there who’s perfectly happy playing with the same old toys.
I am no perfectionist. Just struggle with writer’s block.