I have an on again off again love affair with modern fiction. I just feel safer in cyberspace or in the clutches of a dragon. Something about the unreality of it all says that I can expect clear rules and scenarios that don’t devolve into senseless madness. Rarely in a fantasy novel does a gunman stalk through a kindergarten classroom picking and choosing who dies. Perhaps there is more to it than that though. I, being no psychologist, am hard pressed to uncover the deeper truths of my own psyche. I can only say that it feels comfortable out there and less so when writing the lines of the modern day. This is why I feel such a swell of confusion at that writerly proverb, Write what you know. For, how can I ever really know a world where a trio of precogs uncover what crime you intend to commit before you do it, or a world where a slip of science unleashes an army of creatures who are not alive yet not quite dead?
Often I hear the term derivative applied to the works of some authors–myself included. The critics suggest that a writer lifted the cloth of one story, stapled them to another and called it a new creation. This happens often, and is often purposeful, but I suspect it does happen as a result of a shared awareness of the world around us as well as our reactions to what we see, hear, and even read. When we experience new things and have the same background of previous experiences it is possible to come to the same conclusions. Therefore two authors came simultaneously arrive at the same plot. What will differ in that plot is the characterization, for those characters arrive wholly from the specific day-to-day experiences of the writer.
I encourage writing the stories that come to you. Don’t worry about being derivative or doing something already done–everything has already been done. Focus on the people and tell that tale. Perhaps write what you know really means write who you know, for in those relationships you will find your uniqueness.