The story you're writing matters, even if someone else already wrote it before you.
Yo, what's up, I was digging through my old school stuff and found my old Senior Capstone paper, Redefining Adulthood: The Impact of YA Literature, and it had something in it I think is important to share. I'm not some super genius, I didn't get perfect grades, and my Senior Capstone Seminar wasn't an A+, but I still need to say it.
If you don't want to read all the technical jargon from the paper, the TL;DR is the title.
Research from Oregon State University argues there is “a distinction between ‘Literature with a capital L’ and ‘literature with a small l.’ […] According to the critic Derek Attridge, there are three qualities that define modern Western Literature” (Thomas & Gottlieb, 2022). Attridge labels them as, “a quality of invention or inventiveness in the text itself […] the reader’s sense that what they are reading is singular. In other words, the unique vision of the writer herself […] a sense of ‘otherness’ that pushes the reader to see the world around them in a new way” (Thomas & Gottlieb, 2022).
Just a buncha fancy words to say that the way YOU tell a story makes it valuable, even if it's already been told before. My argument:
Attridge’s first quality of Literature is inventiveness, where its individual value is discovered. For example, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) is about children trapped in isolation, while Andy Weir’s The Martian (2011) is about a man also trapped in isolation. However, Golding’s book takes place on an island devoid of adults while Weir’s book takes place on a planet devoid of any other human life (Mars). Both books share a similar narrative but each display inventiveness in the style with which they are told, therefore each has their own individual values as Literature.
Literature’s second quality, its singularity, shows us its artistic value in the way the words are structured, organized, and combined. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (1975) both tell a similar gothic horror story about vampires, but Stoker’s story is an epistolary novel while King’s story is a third-person omniscient novel. Both are highly esteemed works of Literature, but the styles in which they were written gives them singularity. The prosaic exposition of Stoker and King gives these similar stories each their own artistic value as separate works of Literature.
Literature’s final quality is its otherness (in comparison to the reader), which can often be directly proportional to its educational value. Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer (2019) immerses heterosexual cis-gendered readers in the otherness of those who refuse to, or are unable to, conform to society’s gender and sexuality expectations to provide an experience which educates the reader to view the world in a manner they may have not otherwise considered. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) provides education on the otherness of women trapped in a radicalized patriarchal society, both to give female readers a look into a possible future should they not fight for their rights and to give male readers a look into the decimation of agency experienced by women worldwide. Robert Webb’s How Not to Be a Boy (2018) sheds light on the absurd expectations boys and men struggle against to reach the apotheosis of manhood, providing an educational view to all gendered readers on how the concept of being a man has been twisted, corrupted, and weaponized against both men, women, and society.
So yeah, someone probably already wrote the idea you had. But they can't tell it the way you can because they aren't, and never will be, you. So write it anyway. Make more capital-L Literature. The world needs it.
Thomas, P., & Gottlieb, E. (2022, Jan. 3). “What is Literature?”: A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers. Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms. Oregon State University. https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-literature-definition-examples
