Original Thoughts (Or "How to Become Brilliant Without Even Trying")

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

- C.S. Lewis

Let me introduce you to one of my all-time favorite quotes. Not only was C.S. Lewis a theological genius, and a fantastic writer, but he also has some very quotable sayings, and this is probably one of the best (in my opinion). I write to you today as an editor. Some of these posts recently have addressed writers such as myself - how we think, how we act, etc. But this time, I am writing from the editor within me. And I feel like today's post is pertinent because a lot of writers (including myself) struggle with coming up with brilliant plots for stories. If I could only get something unique, we think, then the rest will just come to me. I won't start a novel, for instance, because I feel like I have nothing to write about. I don't have any great ideas, or amazing plot twists sitting at my desk, handy. But what if you don't really have to be "original"? What if trying too hard to become original actually causes you to stumble, not advance, in your writing?

The reason that I love the above quote is because of the sheer simplicity of his advice. There are dozens of books out there devoted to us writers - usually by writers, for writers. There's books about how to write the next great American novel, about how to get your novel published before you die, about how to write great poems, etc. And we gravitate toward these sort of books. Every day on my lunch break, I drive five or ten minutes to Borders. I'm at a desk all day, so it's nice to get up and walk around. And what better place to do so than a book store?

One tiny section caught my eye on my first day of perusal. I turned a corner and found myself staring at a section of books under the heading "Getting Published." Naturally, this intrigued me, and I found a few dozen books much like the ones that I just mentioned above. The books have great exercises in them (one book was focused solely on dreams and writing based off of those) in order to stimulate inspiration (....remember that blog entry?) for writers or would-be writers.

But Lewis' advice takes up only a few lines, and I find it more helpful than all of the books on those shelves. His suggestion for us is to simply tell the truth. Tell a story, no matter how many times you think you have heard the story before. I've heard it said before that all of the possible plot lines in the world have already been used up. It's just up to writers to find ways to tweak those that already exist. And when you think about it, this is accurate (think about how many rom-coms out there have nearly the same premise). So perhaps writing is not so much about being original as it is about being truthful.

Back to my original focus: I write today from an editor's point-of-view, because I have worked for a few literary journals in my time and I tend to see a common thread among submissions that I reject. They all try too hard to be something they're not. Nearly all of the poems that I reject are not bad poems, per se. They're just not honest enough. The poet either doesn't have a grasp on the vocabulary that they could have a grasp on, or they put too much of themselves into their work (I don't know how many more poems about broken hearts I can read...). The poems and short stories that stand out to me are ones in which narrators observe - they honestly portray the world (for better or for worse).

As Lewis notes - when you do this, you won't think that it is anything special. To you, dear writer, this may sound absurdly simplistic and a little bit silly. Write the truth? That's all? Isn't it though? Isn't that what life is all about - just writing it as it happens? Not trying to be profound or meaningful. But in that truth, there is meaning. And there is genius.

And it may sound simple, but you'll end up writing better if you stop trying to be something you are not.