A Truth Universally Acknowledged...

It is a truth universally acknowledged in the world of writing that if you have a good idea for a story, chances are, someone else has the same one.

I discovered that another author has beaten me to the punch in one of my manuscripts - an inspirational romance set in the last days of World War II at a German POW camp in Nebraska. I had wanted to write a romance set here because I wrote on this POW camp for my MA thesis. I figured that after doing all that research and knowing the camp so well, it would be the perfect setting for a story. One of my writing buddies (Rene!) gave me the grain of an idea for the story and I ran with it. I still remember sitting at the computer and typing and typing...the ideas just continued to flow until pretty soon, I had written the entire plot. It was truly amazing and I believe God was working through me. That's why I'm determined, even though someone else already has a book set in this particular place, that I'm going to still write my own version. I think there's room enough in this world for two.

I will admit that I came home from work rather depressed yesterday after finding all of this out. My husband was wonderfully supportive and told me that he didn't see it as a problem, but rather as a challenge - the challenge to write MY unique story.

It's the weekend and I'm looking to work on the plot of my historical some more and I think I shall also continue working on the inspirational manuscript. I'm already four chapters into it. My critique partners encourage me to keep working on it because they really love the story. And isn't that the whole goal? To have our stories touch other people's lives? No matter how small our impact, it is still felt.