As a creative person, the first thing you realize after you've spent hours of your time crafting something from the aether of your mind, is that it has already been made by someone else. Worse yet, it has already been cleaned, polished, refined, packaged and sold, not to mention that it's orders of magnitude more awesome than what you've created. The initial reaction is shock. Secondary and tertiary reactions include feelings of anger, disappointment, self-loathing and failure. This is about as common to creative people as is, I assume, misplacing a decimal symbol every now and again for mathematicians.
There is, despite how hard you try, only one story that can ever be told. But it must be told, all the same. In no genre is this truer than in fantasy, where a burgeoning author not only has to deal with the likes of Titans like Tolkein and Lewis (you'll hear me mention them a lot, most likely), but also with newcomers like Rowling who storm the fantasy realm with infectious and massively lucrative offerings that blot out other works with the same efficacy as does, for lack of a better (or more appropriate) metaphor, the moon to the sun during a solar eclipse. How does one make their work stand out? How does one make a living at that which they know to be their life's purpose, when their measure of worth is reliant on things as fickle as other people's opinions?
Believe you me, if I knew the answers to these questions, I would not even be writing this entry. Or perhaps I would, but from a more explanatory and less exploratory perspective, for the sake of others who would take the same path as I and who are (undoubtedly) feeling the same frustration. Until the day when I solve this riddle, I'll be continually enslaved to my computer, hawking and plugging and languishing away to eek out one more book sale. I speak as though I have endured much hardship, though in reality my publishing career has barely gone on long enough to even call it one.
For my part, I pride myself on my originality, and I prefer to let it speak for itself. At first glance, the influences of my masters seem clearly visible, but I have to disagree that my, in fact most, fantasy is simply copying other fantasy. Rather, I think that those who enjoy reading fantasy, as well as those who endeavor to write it, must have a certain sensibility that leads them to draw the same conclusions about the way fictitious worlds work. To distill it even further: great minds think alike. Replace the term "great minds" with "the minds of fantasy writers working independently of one another to contribute to an overall genre and the readers who support them" and perhaps you'll understand what I'm talking about.
To use my own book as an example, I created characters long before I'd ever read "The Lord of the Rings," who, miraculously, fit the archetypes set forth in that pinnacle of fantasy almost perfectly. I had a young protagonist of a rare and curious race that is not widely known in the world. I had a mystical old magician who imparts what wisdom he can on said protagonist before brushing him out the door and onto a grand adventure. I had a hearty, loyal dwarf and a cave-dwelling, treasure hording dragon, an evil wizard in a mysterious hermitage, a flawed warrior seeking to do right by his king and his people, even a humble woodsman who ascends to greatness. In the very early stages of character development, my young protagonist even had a loyal friend and faithful companion... whose name was Sam.
I can't help but believe that not all of this was coincidental (I did, however, scrap my Sam once I started reading "The Fellowship of the Ring." See the first paragraph of this post to determine how I felt about that). I wasn't plagiarizing, I wasn't copying... I wasn't even aware of Tolkien's work! There are just some facets to genre fiction that simply exist in the minds of those who wish to write it, without having been put there by anyone else at all! It must be true. I can think of no other way to explain it.
You can imagine my heartfelt glumness when I read "Lord of the Rings" and realized there was no way I'd ever be able to compare to a man who spent his life crafting one specific world that has since become the standard by which all literature of the genre is judged. So what did I do? I stopped trying to compare. I decided that I couldn't necessarily improve upon what had come before. All I could do was be faithful to my vision, to the worlds and characters and stories that unfold in my mind, and all else be damned! Well, not damned, per se, since I love reading and watching works of fantasy, but I suppose you know what I'm driving at.
Hence I submit that what you read of mine, indeed of most authors is not simply an amalgamation of what has come before, but a continuation. There is a realm in which these people, these creatures and these powers are very real, at least to some of us, and they must be respected for what they are. Fantasy is a genre that lets us look at ourselves, our culture, as though looking at others, and it thrives not only on the uniqueness of the imaginations of its authors, but also upon the common language spoken between reader and writer. That language predates me, predates those who have gone before, indeed may even predate language itself, and that is the singular beauty of it.
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