This week's question
What SNI were you psyched to work on, but discovered it was too close to something already done?
I was totally psyched to work on my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel. It was going to be set at a drama camp. Musical numbers, jazz hands. The campers were going to perform my favorite musical, Guys and Dolls. I was even going to try to have a little mystery as part of the plot. It was going to combine my life in theater with my love of writing. It was going to be like Glee for books. I worked on it and it turned out how most of my NaNo projects turn out which is to say it was a 50,000 word mess.
Watching the 2011 Tony's and keeping my fingers crossed for the cast of a show I worked on and seeing what Twitter had to say about it I discovered that someone else had already written a book that takes place at theater camp where there is a production of Guys and Dolls. Dramarama by E. Lockhart.
I haven't worked on my summer theater camp story since I crossed the 50,000 mark in November of 2010. I still hope to someday write a story that involves theater but I'm not sure my summer theater camp story is the right one.
9 comments:
Ugh, I hate when that happens! I hope you get to write a story about theater soon--you've got so much insight into that world!
Oh, that's too bad. It stinks when the similarity is so specific too (like Guys and Dolls). I say tweak it a little and go for it :-)
Oh bummer!
But Glee and High School Musical will keep the theatre theme popular for a while, I'm sure. Hope you find your perfect theatre camp book to do, and that you get to recycle some of your NaNo effort in the process.
It's a shame that this happened, but something tells me you'll sift out what you loved the most from your Nano novel and add more from other sources and have something ever better than you started out with.
This often happens to me with character creation. I'll create something I like, but that feels too cliche, and later I'll rework that character concept, pulling from it only the traits I really liked. I'll end up with a character I like much better, who feels far more original.
Aww :(
What about a drama camp that puts on a production of Rent? ;)
What are the odds that the book even included Guys and Dolls? Hopefully you'll be able to go back to it and use a different musical and make that NaNo even better.
I agree with other commenters--you could probably still make something of the story, just with a different musical, or at least salvage the best elements for something else.
Even if it's similar, it will never be the same because you are different writers. Keep working on it and see what happens. Also, if we love Glee, etc, we're hungry for more like that, aren't we?
Write on!
Oh how frustrating. It happens though and since you've still got good material, I'm sure you'll find a way to get this vision of yours to pan out:)
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