Say It In A New Way

It's not only new writers who worry about creating something that seems to have done before. There are just so many plots for a novel or only a few perspectives on divorce, marriage, or childbirth. So, it's inevitable that you're going to choose a subject sometime that has been done again and again.

Don't you get sick of reading the same story over and over again in the newspaper when some scandal hits Washington DC or Hollywood? Journalists around the world write about the event and they get published so what's the difference you might wonder. I tend to tune out when it's the same story running like a hamster on his exercise wheel. 

What you can do is write something that has been done before but put a new twist on it. Bring in a viewpoint that no one else has done. There are lots of poems about stars. That's fine but, when you write a poem about stars, consider a new angle. No more "Star light, star bright..." 

Medical magazines have myriad stories about people having a heart attack. I wrote one, too, but mine highlighted what happened when my husband had a heart attack on a chilly February day on the golf course. Few golfers were on the course that day and the group he was in had no carts. They walked for exercise. A bit ironic, I know. One of the men spied a cart on another fairway and he ran faster than he'd ever run in his life to commandeer it for his buddy laying on the 14th green in great pain. He told the man who was driving the cart to run to the clubhouse and call an ambulance. Then he drove faster than any golf cart had a right to be going to pick up my husband. The three men got Ken into the cart and sped to the clubhouse. The man who called the ambulance was a military man who had been a medic so he did all the preliminary things needed until the paramedics arrived. The story was sold to the first magazine I sent it to. Why? Because it was a little different kind of heart attack story. By the way, Ken ended up with a stent and has been fine in the 16 years since that happened.

So, write about a popular topic in a different way and you'll catch an editor's eye.