If you don't write it someone else will.

There's a TV show coming out this fall that I need everyone to not watch. Seriously. It's like they knew I named a major event in my book The Blackout and found it to be as brilliant an occurrence as I did. But, you see, NBC has a lot more money than me and can produce things a lot faster than I can. They're splashing their commercials everywhere, talking about this show that takes place 15 years after the Blackout.

I wish I could really ask you to not watch the show. If it takes off, I'll have to find another name for my Blackout and I might come up with something flowery and silly like the never ending night or something. (Please, steal that, let me keep my Blackout).

This is more for anyone with an idea in your head, something you've been wanting to write but haven't for whatever reason. Ideas seem to come in cycles. The TWILIGHT series wasn't the first vampire love story, just the most popular. It did lead to a huge inundation of those books being published (most agents and publishers won't even look at your MS if it's about vampires). It was followed by fairies and now mermaids. (The most awesome mermaid book of course being OF POSEIDON, btw).

My awesome agent called me about a month ago to tell me there's another book in the process of being published that uses another major term in my book. I had to come up with a completely new name for this race of people. Someone else somewhere in the world thought the word that's the most perfect word in the world for my people is also perfect for her people. Did that make any sense? And no, I'm not telling you what it is.

These are major hurdles to overcome. I'm working on my third round of revisions, having accepted many of the changes needed to make my story better. This other book being published with MY term really threw me. It wasn't writer's block. I knew exactly what needed to be written, how the story was going to progress. I have an outline and everything. But I was so depressed that someone else had gotten there first.

And there's not really anything I can do about it. Except put on my big girl panties and move forward. If I let these things keep me from writing a story for my agent to sell, there's going to be even more things other people are stealing from my brilliant mind that I'm going to have to change.

Write, write, write! If you're not writing, someone else is--and they might be writing your story.