{"id":104,"date":"2012-07-12T03:54:56","date_gmt":"2012-07-12T03:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.undergroundmediaware.com\/?p=104"},"modified":"2012-07-12T03:54:56","modified_gmt":"2012-07-12T03:54:56","slug":"everything-has-been-done-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.undergroundmediaware.com\/?p=104","title":{"rendered":"Everything has been done before"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was originally working on my &#8220;first novel&#8221; (mentioned in my blog post below), I was in a couple of writing groups.\u00a0 Submitting my book\u2019s first few chapters to the groups to critique, I was surprised to get the same feedback from most of the groups\u2019 members: my novel reminded them of <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ender%27s_game\">Ender\u2019s Game<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, I hadn\u2019t read <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Ender\u2019s Game<\/span>, but I knew it by shear reputation; it was <em>the<\/em> most critically-acclaimed bestselling sci-fi novel of the 1980s.\u00a0 To be compared to such a monumental work was a tremendous compliment, or so I first thought.<\/p>\n<p>I soon began to worry that my &#8220;magnum opus&#8221; had already been written.\u00a0 I resisted the urge to read <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Ender\u2019s Game<\/span>, fearing that I\u2019d learn that that my game-changing, mind-f*cking, breathtakingly-original novel was cliche.<\/p>\n<p>Well, I finally grew some and recently read <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Ender\u2019s Game.<\/span>\u00a0 And I can see why it\u2019s so popular: it\u2019s a game-changing, mind-f*cking, breathtakingly-original novel.<\/p>\n<p>And I can see why my fellow writers compared my &#8220;first novel&#8221; to <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Ender\u2019s<\/span>: Both are sci-fi.\u00a0 Both have young protagonists.\u00a0 And both involve an alien invasion.<\/p>\n<p>But that\u2019s where the similarities end: Ender is a child; my &#8220;first novel\u2019s&#8221; hero is in high school.\u00a0 <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Ender\u2019s Game<\/span> occurs in the far future; my &#8220;first novel&#8221; happens in the present.\u00a0 <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Ender\u2019s<\/span> takes place on various worlds and space stations; for the most part, my novel unfolds on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>So thankfully, not everything has been done before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was originally working on my &#8220;first novel&#8221; (mentioned in my blog post below), I was in a couple of writing groups. Submitting my book\u2019s first few chapters to the groups to critique, I was surprised to get the same feedback from most of the groups\u2019 members: my novel reminded them of Ender\u2019s Game.<\/p>\n<p> [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.undergroundmediaware.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.undergroundmediaware.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.undergroundmediaware.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.undergroundmediaware.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.undergroundmediaware.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.undergroundmediaware.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/www.undergroundmediaware.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.undergroundmediaware.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.undergroundmediaware.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.undergroundmediaware.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}