The Collected Recipes of Abraham Lincoln

There’s an oft repeated saying or meme along the lines of: if you think your idea for a book isn’t original enough, consider how many recipe books are published each year. Or how many biographies of Abraham Lincoln have been written.

It’s unlikely that each recipe book has such a niche market, or that any of this year’s biographies have new interviews or a fresh insight into the 16th US President’s life or decision making.

It’s that each writer has their own angle. It’s each writers voice and view and perspective, their own weight to throw behind the work, that makes the book worth reading. And worth writing it.

In a Patti Smith interview she once said she was told early in her career that everything’s already been said. Her reply was along the lines of, “well, perhaps but I haven’t said it.” Since the mid-70s all those things would have been said many times more.

Finding what you have to say and how you will say it is what makes it your book or film or song.