The quiet resonance of authenticity

This line comes from Elizabeth Gilbert's brilliant book Big Magic, and as soon as I read it something soared within me.  The quote comes in a section she titles "Originality Versus Authenticity", and her discussion struck a deep chord with me.

"You're worried that your ideas are commonplace and pedestrian, and therefore unworthy of creation" she says.  "Aspiring writers will often tell me 'I have an idea, but I'm afraid that it's already been done.'"

This sparked off so many resonances for me.  As an SF writer, writing in a genre that is in love with shiny tech, time travel, and weird civilisations, I often feel that my grounded ideas are too pedestrian.   This is reinforced by my desire to write near future SF, SF that's no more than a century of two ahead of today.  Stories set in a universe and in a human culture that still bear more than a passing resemblance to our culture and lives today.

For me, that's one of the biggest reasons for writing SF.  I'm writing soft SF that pokes and prods at current-day societal beliefs, at the way we live our lives today.  And often that might result in a refusal of, or a running-away from, the shiny tech towards a life that looks simpler.

"So what if we repeat the same themes?" Elizabeth Gilbert says.  "Most things have already been done - but they have not yet been done by you...  These days, I'm far more moved by authenticity."

This was a lightbulb moment for me,  I've secretly thought of my novel Starfire as a rehash of Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War books crossed with CJ Cherryh's The Pride of Chanur.  That had been done before, so what the hell was I doing writing a book in that territory?

Well... Unlike Kylara Vatta, Ria Bihar stays a civilian Trader.  Sort of.  and like Pyanfar Chanur, she operates as a special envoy for another species.  But she doesn't have the clan restrictions that Pyanfar does, she's rejected the control of her big and powerful family years ago, and she trades as an independent.  She might be delving into matters as a Ha'linn liaison, but she never turns military.

And those differences are what gives the book its "unique resonance of authenticity".  Yes, the same issues are covered, but they're done In my way, in my own world.  Thanks to Elizabeth Gilbert, I now believe that the book is authentic enough to feel original, which is what counts in the end.