Reinventing the Wheel

Every story out there has been told a bazillion times. Yes, I say bazillion, because we have no confirmed knowledge of how long humans have been around and how long they have told each other stories (I mean, we have theories but I wasn't there 3,000 years ago, were you?).

I was driving home today and listening to NPR, which is about the only thing I listen to in the car anymore. And they were talking about the smallpox virus and it being declared eradicated in the late 70s, but that there are still some stored viruses being held in random scientific labs around the world. And the question was, what should be done with them?

The radio host asked, "Well, we know the DNA. Couldn't we just re-build the virus later if we wanted to?"

To which the scientist responded, "That's not a precedent I'd like to set in the world."

Or something along those lines. You get the drift.

This got my mind churning. And I started thinking about all the different kinds of stories you could make out of those two sentences. And that yes, probably it's a story that has been told before by someone, somewhere in the world. But also that writing is about telling an old story from a new perspective.

And as my writing brain was turning over all those possibilities in my head, something rolled on top of the pile that was completely unrelated to smallpox or mad scientists or terrorists unleashing a terrible (and previously eradicated) virus on humanity. It was a different story idea, sparked by the previous story ideas, that decided to materialize out of the mash-up of thoughts in my head.

Has this story I'm thinking about been told before? Absolutely. So my task is to be fresh. It's not reinventing the wheel; it's painting the wheel a shiny silver color and sending it flying down the street, soaring over a bridge, and finally blasting off into the horizon with a trail of purple dust in its wake.

That, my friends, is how you tell a story. I'd better get started painting that wheel.