The Next Big Thing

So we've had Chick Lit, Lad Lit, Pop Lit, Sun Lit, Aga Sagas, and Bucolic Frolics. Can you think of any other recent tags? What's the next big thing? How often have you heard someone is the 'new' ... (fill in the blank). Madeline Peyroux (featured in the last post) was billed as the 'new' Billie Holliday. I guess it's convenient in marketing terms - 'you like this? You'll love this!'

Occasionally you get an original artist, breaking new ground. On film, there was no Bardot before Bardot. Which new writers have affected you? I watched 'Juno' on a flight recently, and Diablo Cody's voice was so fresh and raw it blew me away. What about books? For me, it tends to be specific books (rather than writers), that affect me. I would love one day to be a good enough writer to produce something as lean and beautiful as 'On Chesil Beach', or something that catches the zeitgeist like 'Bonjour Tristesse'. In music - Norah Jones leapt onto the scene in 2002. Her first album never left the CD player in my office that whole long hot year in Spain, writing with a sleeping newborn baby in a Moses basket at my side. In today's clip she's playing with another favourite - John Mayer scooped a well-deserved Grammy last night.

James Taylor was also nominated for his album 'Covers'. The idea of 'covering' and interpreting another artist's work is commonplace in music. Sometimes it transforms the work, sometimes it kills it dead (do I need to say the words 'Madonna' and 'American Pie'?). When you get two artists like Dolly and Whitney taking on a classic ballad like 'I Will Always Love You' it's hard to say who interprets the material better. If you're ever stuck for a story idea, why not try your own cover version? Try looking back through ancient myths and fairytales, and rework the tales in a contemporary setting? I went through a huge Angela Carter phase a few years back and devoured everything she had written - if you like darkly beautiful fairytales, her work is incredible. Maybe you've read the original Grimm versions and been surprised how bleak the original stories were before Walt & Co reworked them? Carter takes them to a whole new level.

Even in fine art, if you have a classical training, part of it is to copy the masters. I remember watching students in the Prado, their easels set up before the El Grecos and Goyas, painting perfect copies of the masterpieces on the gallery walls. It's an interesting exercise if you've never tried it with writing - choose a favourite author whose 'voice' appeals to you, someone you know well. Take ten minutes and write something in their style. What you'll get is not a copy, but an interpretation - something new and your own.

TODAY'S PROMPT: If you were billed as 'the new ...' which writer would you hope to be compared to? Who is in your pantheon of greats? If there really is nothing new in the universe on a molecular level, do you think it follows that every creative act is in some way reworking the past too? Remoulding it, making something new, but recycling that artist's experience and influences? Polti said there are a finite number of dramatic themes - so we are all working with the same material. The difference is that no one sees the world the way you do, no one expresses their experience like you. When you are starting out, there is nothing better than following in the footsteps of the masters, learning your apprenticeship. Once you learn how they handle the basic structure, the nuts and bolts of writing, your own work will have the strongest foundations to build on.