Stolen Works, or Honoring What Came Before?

What happens when your great idea is not your great idea?

Way back in my collegiate era, I fell in love with solo opportunities. Noon recitals at school, concerto competitions, solo scholarship contests. The conflict that I ran into circa 1990-1998 was, in my humble opinion, there were about four good solo pieces for bass trombone, and I played them already. Any new repertoire I wanted to learn, I had to steal from other bass clef instruments, and I did so with guile and bravado. Then I met Syrinx.

Claude Debussy’s Syrinx for solo flute is a rite of passage piece for all flute players. Three and half minutes of delicate dancing, cavorting, and pentatonic-scaling in a hypnotic frenzy, telling the tale of the titled character and her horny stalker Pan showing up and ruining everything.

Once I heard it performed on alto flute by my 20th Century Music professor, Dr. Daniel Kessner, as well as by Hollywood tuba-legend Jim Self, I knew I had to play it as well, and I programmed it on my senior recital. Since then, it remained my “back-pocket” piece: A solo always at the ready to perform, and no other bass trombonist was performing it.

I felt like I conquered the world. HEY, LOOK AT ME! I MASTERED THIS FLUTE PIECE ON BASS TROMBONE THAT NO ONE HAS EVER PLAYED BEFORE. I’M A-MA-ZING!

…till 2013, when Justin Clark recorded it on his debut CD.

I had this remote, bucket-list-potential idea to record a solo CD (shows you how long ago I had the idea. Might as well have called it a bass trombone wax cylinder). As soon as someone else did, the air escaped from my balloon, and I drowned in the river Ladon. YouTube and Google have countless links to arrangements of music and videos of everyone playing it on a low brass instrument. Although good for them, my once brilliant idea was now everyone’s idea.

(For the record, I’ve never met Justin Clark, never heard him play, but he’s a dude doing his best thing and I salute him nonetheless.)

Comp titles. Let’s talk about ‘em.

When you query a literary agent about representing you and your novel, you provide them comparative titles as to what your book is about. It tells them what the plot is like, what the voice is like, where in the bookstore it will be shelved, and how they will attempt to sell it.

“It’s like The West Wing and North Dallas Forty had a love child, written by William Shakespeare.”

(Dear Low Notes reader, I made that up on the spot and I give you permission to steal that idea if you so choose.)

The book I have been working on for four years is currently with Beta Readers and after I get their notes, apply some changes, and fix some grammar, I will begin the query process. In other words, I need comp titles.

So far, this is the most frustrating part of the “getting published” process. The part of the explanation I left out on comp titles? They must be no more than 4 years old, and 4 is pushing it! 1-3 years old shows you have a better idea of what the market is supporting these days. 4 is close (pre-pandemic). 5 and more is ancient history.

Without giving too much away, my main character is Death, a popular choice by Marcus Zusak, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, José Saramago, and more. My story is not so original that it’s never been done before. What keeps me up at night is if it has been done too much.

(Then again, Romance is a hugely successful genre and in those stories you MUST have a happy ending. Talk about a repeated spoiler alert!)

So far, my comps list has some potential choices. I’ve got a premise (Mrs Death Misses Death, published in 2021), I’ve got a similar voice (Christopher Moore), and I’m searching for a few additional pieces of this elusive puzzle. Yet, as the search continues, I’m finding so many close calls in the aforementioned books, TV shows, movies, and more. With a few recent author spats on Xwitter as of late, with accusations flying of plagarism, I start to get nervous that someone is going to come after me with the horrible claims.

My fantastic book coach, Jocelyn Lindsay, assuaged my fears in a recent email exchange on the topic.

You're not going to be accused of stealing. If someone does, they're not anyone worth listening to. (Your story) isn't a new idea. It's the voice and your personal take on it that makes it unique. And ideas aren't copyrights. Someone may say, "Hey, this reminds me of ______" and then you can preen because your book's been spoken in the same sentence as the show. 

If it’s been done before, what the hell are we doing as artists?

As far as I’m concerned, artists today of all walks of life are performing a theme and variations on their latest release. Someone already did an original version, and everyone else is creating their variation.

-A painting of fruit, or a field, or an abstract collection of shapes

-E major-A major-B major and singing about love

-gruff main character kicks everyone’s ass to save a thing

Just because Debussy has been dead for one hundred and six years does not mean Syrinx is long dead. Romance novels fill the reader’s hearts with hope and warm fuzzies that has motivated humankind to wiggle one’s eyebrows and say “How you doin’?” Death has remained a fascinating character because it is relatable, and eventually present in everyone’s life (or maybe not, hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge…)

We art because we want to do it too. When I play bass trombone, I emulate traits of no less than six different influences. When I write, I channel the voices and vocabulary that excite me. When I draw, I do it simply to see if I can do it. I have no plans to top Albrecht Dürer as a master craftsman, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have fun trying it.

If you have a great idea, or inspiration hits from somewhere, follow it. Art has no restrictions (shy of personal taste and a digestible sense of decency). If you wish to conduct Mahler’s Third Symphony in the style of The Muppet Show, go for it. Sell it! Convince me it’ll work.

I won’t be the last person to write Death as a character, nor will the fantastical magically realistic premise of my story remain as the final version of that concept.

The orchestral warhorses continue to age, and yet, are still programmed and for good reason. They’re awesome! My hope is with my remaining time on this planet, I’ll hear a conductor present a version of the same old symphony that is vibrant and new and different. That’ll keep me coming back.

I’m writing Death as a main character. Pretty sure you haven’t read this one before. Hopefully some literary agent will be as excited about it as I am, and then, lucky readers… you won’t hear me shut up about him! That’s a good problem to have.

Write on!