193: When the Book You're Writing Already Exists

 

A few weeks ago, I discovered the book I'm just starting to write is very similar to a published book in a different genre. This episode discusses what my thought process was when I discovered this and how I handled it.

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When the Book You're Writing Already Exists

Hi friend. Welcome back to Your Big Creative Life podcast. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening. I'm going to share. I've been going through it this last month. OK, I'll just say with this new book idea that I had and discovering that there is a published book that basically was my premise and like the journey that I went. After realizing this and freaking out and pivoting and adjusting my idea. And I wanted to record a podcast episode about this because this is something that happens. It might be as small as realizing that this other book out there has a similar kind of similar character to yours or similar premise or a similar detail about the world. Or it could be holy shit, this published book is exactly the book that I wanted to write. I'm going to write. Already written, whatever like this is a thing that just happens. There are only so many new ideas. It's not a bad sign at all. Like I don't take it as a bad sign that. This idea has been written about already because I just again, it just happens and there are only so many news stories and what differentiates books from each other is the voice of the author.

Details like the world and the characters, the writing staff like, there's so many things that differentiate. But it's just not an automatic like a red flag. And like, oh, you've got to completely scrap the idea. But let me just kind of fill you in on what happened. And then I can talk about the decision that I made going forward. So that in case this ever happens to you, you have some insight into this. But I guess the first most important thing to say is like, yeah, this this shit happens. And OK, so I got this idea for this book a couple of years ago and started writing it. I wrote a few chapters when I was stuck on my last book, which is my process, right I start writing a book, I get a ways in. I panic. I freak out, I write something else like that's just what happened when I was writing my first two books. Neither of. Which are published will. Just say, but it yeah, it just happens.

So I got the idea for this book. It's a thriller. And I started writing it and got a couple of chapters in and then like, didn't really know where the story was going, so I stopped, but I did outline some plot points. I did do some work on the character in particular. I even wrote a scene that happens way later in the book. Usually my process is to write chronologically, so I don't jump around between scenes. I just start at the beginning and write my way through, but I had a snippet of something that came to me, and so I wrote it. It was like just a couple of pages, but anyway, so I had maybe 8,10 thousand words. Hmm. And I did have a sense that I'd have to start. I like kind of scrap those and start over because a lot of it was just not very interesting.

So I don't know yeah. And the premise for this thriller. Was a young woman got hired to ghostwrite a memoir for a celebrity who had had, like, a fall from grace and had been reclusive and shut herself away. And that was that was the idea for it. OK, so Fast forward. That was a coup. Fast forward. Now I'm getting ready to dive back into this book because I'm ready to write it. The last book that I wrote, I'm finishing up edits right now with my agent to that book, and that will be going on submission soon. So because that book's ready, I needed to turn my attention to something new. And when you go on submission. When your book goes on submission, it's always nice to be able to talk about what you're working on next, so that if a publisher is interested, you can say, hey, this is my next book that I'm thinking about. So I had it in the back of my head that I wanted to dive back in to. This book then I read Emily Henry's great big. What is it? Great, big, beautiful life. I got it from the library. I started reading it and I didn't really know what the book was about. Like, I don't even. I can't remember if I started reading it and then looked at the jacket copy and was like oh shit. And if you haven't read great big, beautiful life, it is a romance.

So it's a different genre. Emily Henry is not a thriller. Brighter, but so much of the premise was the same. There are two characters in great big, beautiful life who are like competing for the chance to tell this story. To write this memoir of this celebrity, this like disgraced celebrity who is a reclusive woman who lives in this southern, like town and that there were so many similarities. I'm just like, Oh my God, Oh my God. And I had a bit of a freak out now. Off the bat, the fact that they're different genres means even if I had kept my original idea the same. It would have been very different just by nature of being two different genres. In Emily Henry's book, there are two writers who are vying for this job of telling this story right and. I mean, it's no surprise it's one of the other writer is the love interest for this main character, right? And my the book did not have that element, but again, I'm not even going to get into all the similarities because at one point it just was like ready to throw the book against the wall. I'm like, what am I? What am I doing now? But there were. A lot of them.

So my options were to set aside my book idea completely, like scrap it and start writing something new. Proceed as is with my original story idea. My original premise, my original setting, characters, everything that I had sort of outlined already. Again, I'm not a huge outliner, I didn't have every scene nailed down. I didn't have the entire plot mapped out, but I did have a lot. I had made a lot of decisions about things. OK, proceed as. I had originally planned or option 3 was to adjust my story idea a bit, adjust some details in order to make it feel more distinct from this Emily Henry book. UM and I did panic a bit and wonder if I should scrap it because I really liked my original idea. And I just wasn't sure what else could fill its place, and I don't know. So I wrestled with it for a bit and then ultimately decided wait, no, I I figured out enough about this book. I want to go forward with this idea because I think the way that I'm telling it is different. And I ended up going with Option 3.

So I'm going to or have already. I haven't actually started writing this like gotten back into it, but a couple days ago I did a big brainstorming session and I jotted down a ton of notes about my main character and the other characters, and I've made some significant changes to the premise. I'm going to just share. I think I'll just share two of those changes. I don't want to give too much away. It already feels weird admitting like what book was very similar. I didn't mention the exact title on social media when I talked about this because I was like, this feels weird, but I feel safe for admitting it on the podcast. I don't really know why that is, but anyways, uh, one of the differences that I made is I changed the setting so the setting is now going to be in Virginia. That's well, that's all I'm going to say. And then the other difference that I made is, yes, she's ghost writing a memoir. But it's. Instead of it being a woman who just lives by herself now there's a family involved and there are multiple suspicious people in this family who this person is going to be interviewing and gathering information on who all have their own like, hidden agenda. And this woman is kind of like the matriarch of this clan. Where there are secrets and all of that.

So that's those two changes are two, two big changes that that I think help it feel different. And again I I I think I probably could have made it work. Without changing things, just because mines a thriller and that was a romance. But it get, I don't know. I'm just. I'm just really hesitant. And part of the reason I didn't want to go with that. Route with Option 2, where I didn't change anything is because of my experience going on submission a year or two ago with my second book, which was a thriller about a podcast and then getting feedback from editors from publishers that there were so many books about podcasts out there. There. That the market was just flooded, it was too over saturated. And that was a big reason why they weren't interested. And so because of that experience, I am so much more aware of like. This fear that I have, I guess, about being kind of auto rejected because it feels too similar to something that's already out there. And justice by nature of the fact that Emily Henry is a big author like I do, worry that people will take this idea and run with it. And I don't know, it's a fear. It's an irrational fear. I mean, some parts of it might be rational, but I know some parts of this fear are just irrational. It's me panicking. It's me worrying that I'll never sell a book like I. I can recognize that.

But that's part of why I didn't want to go with Option 2. So in that brainstorming session that I had a couple of days ago, I made a few other decisions about the. Trajectory of the. Book making some changes to my main character so that she felt different from the protagonist in Emily Henry's book and. Yeah, a few other things that I feel good about and honestly looking at the because all I did was a Microsoft Word Doc, I don't have a super complicated organizational system or anything like that. I just wrote some stuff out, created some bullet points, and I also dictated like I just talked and like talked like, what if this and oh, this character is like this and then it turns out that. Like I just kind of word vomited onto a Microsoft Word page. So I have this Microsoft Word doc that's a few pages long and. I also identified what I think will be a good opening point for this story, because that that can be a challenging part of starting a new book. Yeah, is like you, you kind of have to figure out where does this open? What's the first scene? And of course, that can change. I mean, I  have certainly had that experience where I opened the book a certain way like page. 1 Chapter 1 starts a certain way and then later down the road. I realized that wasn't the best place to start the story, and so then I change it so that might happen with this book. It's just a first draft. It's a very messy it. It will be a very messy first draft, but because I'm not keeping what I wrote a couple years ago because I'm cutting that, I need to figure out now. Start this book so I identified a good place for where this is going to open. I think with the opening scene will be and I'm going to start writing. I had plans today to meet up with a a writer friend of mine. We're going to do a lunch time like writing session together, but then she had to reschedule. So we're gonna do it next week instead. Both of us are writers, and we just, like, sit with our laptops and don't talk for an hour.

But we're both working on our projects, so it's. Nice to have someone to do that with but. Yeah, it, it does feel still the little rocky in my head. Like I feel really good about the direction of the book. I feel confident about my decision going with Option 3, but I don't know. I'll just be honest. There is that little part of me that's like, is this still OK? Maybe I'm just proceeding with caution. And honestly, you know what, as I'm talking about this out loud, I realize I need to talk to my agent about this. Not in a permission way. Like, is it OK for me? To do this. But more just. Hey, here's what I'm thinking through a my next project like here's the obstacle that I ran into with this book being similar and just see because she probably will have a sense of that just knowing the market and seeing so many books come across her desk that she works with, or you know that she sold knowing what books are being published so. I can definitely just kind of run it by her and see if she has any thoughts about it, but I also think. What I want to do for this book, especially given the similarities and how I feel, kind of shaky about. Or actually I guess I just have this fear is I want to write a bit like maybe fifty 100 pages and then just like send it to her.

She had offered that with the last book is like, you know, if you're revising this, if you want to just like send me a portion of it to kind of look at 1st and give you any thoughts about the direction I can. And I didn't take her up on that last time because I wanted to just figure out the story, and I think I'm going to do that this time because I don't want to get to the end and realize, like, oh, shit, I really need to change this. Or this or whatever. So. I think I'm going to do that. So yeah, that. That's my. That's my advice to you. If you ever find yourself in this situation is to break it down into what your options actually are, because option one is to proceed as planned. Don't change anything. Option 2 is to like or option one is to scrap it completely. Set the book idea aside like don't do it. Option 2 is to go ahead as planned and then option 3 is to see if you want to change. Something in the premise of the plot of the characters. What? Similar and then move forward with it. There's no right answer always because it's going to depend on so many things. But that's just the decision that I made with and despite the shakiness and the fear like, I do feel good about that part of it. I do feel good about that decision because again, I don't want to completely let go of this idea. It does feel like the next right book for me and I'm excited about the possibility even more with these changes.

And it wouldn't have felt right either. I think I would have had a lot more fear if I just went ahead with my original book idea as planned and counted on the fact that they're different genres to, like, be enough to save me. Yeah, it does feel like a tricky thing to navigate, but again, I just keep coming back to what I'm being reminded of over and over by people on social media when I share about this, which is like there's no new ideas. It. Yeah. But I think for me it's just about like what's the differentiating factor here? How can I infuse my voice and my experience and my writing style into this to make it feel distinct and just trust that it'll work out the way that it's supposed to? And honestly, a big silver lining of this is finding out before I really got too far into this because it would suck. To have a fully written, edited book and then realize the similarities. And of course, if that had happened, like if I became aware of this book and my book was already written, I would have just been like, well, OK, let me just change some things in this book. I probably would have gone that route if the book was already done, but it just saves me time. It saves me effort. I can go into it with a clear understanding of this new, slightly different direction of the book, and that feels good, so I am grateful that I discovered it.

And someone had asked I shared about this on social media and I got a couple of comments from people who are like, you know, did you did you search this out? Like, did you Google to make sure that there weren't any books? Like this out there and I didn't, and I have never done that. I don't know that that's a good option. I mean, I guess I could see an argument for it just to make sure. But I don't know. I guess I kind of count on the fact that different genres, different voices, different details will make it different enough that it's OK that's kind of my thought on it, I guess. Yeah. And there could. And the crazy thing is, there could be other books that have this as a premise. I'm sure that there are. I'm sure that Emily Henry did not pull this idea out of thin air. And like, she's the first person to ever write a book about someone ghost writing a memoir for, like a celebrity or a public figure. I'm sure that that's not a completely original idea. Not to suggest that Emily Henry was like copying anyone. I'm just saying that that it's not that unique of a concept. It's not that unique of a premise, so I'm sure that there are books out there that deal with that similar kind of topic or premise. And I just am not aware of them. That's how it happens.

There are so many books published by small presses by traditional publishers, by indie authors. There's so many books published that it's impossible to keep track of putting that in quotes cause I don't even know how you do that keeps track of all the books out there and like, do do hours of due diligence to make sure that there's no other book. It sounds even remotely close to yours. That's just not a good use of your time or energy, I think. OK, so that's the episode. That's my plan. That's my freak out and how I'm transitioning to this like slightly different version of it. I am going to talk to my agent. I need to just kind of. I think for peace of mind, really. Uh, and then we'll go full steam ahead with this. I had a goal of doing 20, getting 20,000 words, words written by. When did I set that? I think it was like September. I wanted to have 20,000 words written. We'll see. We'll see how August goes and how much I can get done, but. It's exciting to be at the beginning and to think about this news story. In this new direction. OK, wish me luck as I start drafting. All right. Don't panic if this happens to you. It's very common. We'll get through it. All right, thanks for listening. I hope this is helpful. If you're in a similar boat or are just worried about it being in a similar boat at some point in the future now you know, it's common. It happens like you have a plan for if and when it happens. Alright, next week.

Katie Wolf