I used to find it difficult to write fictional stories. Poems were easier, spun out of dream images (which explains why I write bad poetry). Stories... I always felt had to center on some kind of truth... and when you are young, you don't know many emotional truths except your own. As you grow older, it's not that you necessarily become more mature, but you've observed truths not of your own but bestowed from others.
Most likely, the type of stories we will write have probably been written before. For example, the ever classical and reliable bildungsroman - youth experiences life and learns lessons while growing up. Sometimes I feel like shakespeare had written everything (and even he recycled from old tropes): the tragic romeo and juliets, the philosophical (anti-hero?) hamlet, the switched identities (twelfth night), I use this term very loosely "romantic comedies"/battle of the sexes (taming of the shrew).... so it's not that we need new ideas or even that we need to use these classical story types in fresh ways (although you should if you don't want to sound trite)... but People will always have Stories.
Most of the things we write are not growing to break any moulds. But every time I read a book, especially a book I really like, it feels immensely personal. And, when I see someone reading a book I've read before, I feel like we are kindred spirits - regardless if he or she would have felt completely different from my own subjective feelings. It just felt like, in one moment or another, we all took part in someone's story-telling. So, it's not like I've been writing fictional stories of my own, but I finally have had that realisation and courage to take a step forward from just being a reader. To emulate Isaac Newton so to speak and try to stand on the shoulders of (literary) giants... and hopefully not fall off too badly.
I don't think I have a voice yet, but at least I feel the stories forming beneath my feet.
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