Original Intergrity...

I try to write (some of which appears/will appear here.) One problem I face in my writing is an almost compulsive need to be original in what I write.

Jorge Luis Borges, in his short story "The Immortal", claims that, given immortality, all men would write all things. Hence, when he meets Homer in an African desert and discovers that he is so old he can barely remember writing the Odyssey, he concludes that it would be more amazing for man not to have written the Odyssey than for him to have written it.

Borges is full of these wonderful fragile and unreal images. But what if there is something in it? Many many people have postulated the 'only seven stories have ever been told' theory, or a version of it. I prefer to think that this is not the case, and that a story can be different to any before it in a number of ways.

Sometimes I find it frustrating to see a brilliant film, or read a work of genius. It makes me realise that I've now lost the chance to write it myself. But yesterday I thought up the most amazing plot for a short story and I have written most of it joyously already.

But is it nothing more than an illusion? Am I only happy because I haven't read the story I have written yet? It would be so easy to surrender to duplicity, to re-write the greatest works.

Even in originality we stand on the shoulders of the giants that have preceded us. We can hope for nothing more than to form a link in the infinite chain of humanity...