In praise of original creation

 This week I've been noticing a lot of people wasting their time sitting in coffee shops, staring out of the window to pass the morning, or staring at their phones.

The odds are good that these people are on social media, watching other people create content.  Or they're watching a drama which someone else has created.  These same people can often be overheard minutely dissecting what happened in some soap the previous evening,

They are passively absorbing the products of other people's creativity.  I'm willing to bet that many of them have never created anything original in their lives.  As a writer, I can't understand this passive  mindset.  People consume the fruits of other people's creativity - and then complain that that wasn't what they wanted.

To get what you want, you have to create it yourself.  Some of my novels have been inspired by other writers' tales.  I've fallen in love with their worlds, but there is something about that world which I want to change.  So I've created my own version of that story, in answer and challenge to that work.  

Sometimes I've taken a big idea from another writer's work and written my own original take on it.  But sometimes what I've written is the complete opposite of the story I read.  If something in a story angers me, then I'll use my own work to challenge that view of the universe.

Other pieces of my work aren't consciously influenced by any one story.  They're a melting-pot of ideas which are influenced by over forty years' worth of reading in the SF genre.  Out of that melting pot comes a new story thread.  It may have some similar elements to the story which inspired it, but these are a jumping-off point only.

Our original creation sees us leaving the land of established works behind.  We’re taking a leap into the sunlit day with our new narrative.  As we build the solid details of our original world, we make the wings those characters fly on stronger.

Our original creativity is what keeps us doing NaNoWriMo every year.  There’s a high to be got from plucking something out of thin air.  “I made that!” we exclaim, knowing that an hour ago it didn't exist.  That's the magic of original creation.