Do you know what the most frustrating thing about writing a book? Spending hours putting together characters, an outline, writing several pages, only to find out that there’s a book out there similar to yours.

When i found out, i wanted to chuck my whole story out the window and return back to calculating university loans, which seems a lot more fun than dealing with the reality of sharing the spotlight of your book with another book similar to yours. Major problem: that book is already published while i’ve had my idea in mind for a few years and just recently decided to tackle it.

I forced myself to weigh the pros and cons of continuing with my book and decided whether it truly is something i want to publish. After all, i would just end up looking like a copy cat but let me present to you the following evidence:

The Lion King was stolen.

Romeo and Juliet have been recreated over and over again, in terms of books and movies.

Stephen King’s book ‘Under the Dome’ is similar to ‘The Simpson’s Movie.’ He said he never would have published it if he knew about the movie before hand but it brought him great success.

My point is, despite the similar plots, people will read and re-read it over again and then search for something similar because they love it that much and more. I hate to break it to you, i really do, but the odds that you’ll come up with something completely original and new is…well, the odds are slim.

You didn’t copy it word for word, nor did you have the same names and destination and conflicts. Readers will be more engaged in how you tell the story and your goal is to tell it to the best of your ability.

It will hurt when someone asks if it was a spin off of said book but you’ll just have to suck it up because at the end of the day, you worked on that book and you tried to make it as original as you could.

What you’re not going to do is stop writing. You have a unique way of writing that is different from the author that wrote the book you found similar to yours.

The plot may be similar but its not the same and everything else is unique in it’s own way.

**Also, you’ll get over it eventually. I wrote this post a while ago and forgot about it until now. During the time, that other book had been front and center for a few days, maybe even weeks but now, I hardly think about it. You’ll do okay.