Someone Wrote It, Already!

"There are no original stories/concepts left," someone says.
"But they haven't been told/covered by you," another replies.
We know this exchange between writers.  One person states the first line, often as a lament, while the other leans on their crutches in determination (or cheer) and recites the second.

Once the battle is won within the self, the writer begins the work for themselves (and their readers).  Then, the waiting public can start the doubts all over again.

Minority authors (and women) often face the Already Been Done (ABD) criticism from many types of people interacting with their work, regardless of how unique the concept is or how beautiful the prose.  A book about a disabled artist?  It's been written.  Coming out as homosexual in the Bible Belt of America?  Got it covered!  Yet another cancer story?  We have enough.

If one well-known piece of literature exists pertaining to a struggle or life of a minority person, people consider it Already Been Done and discard it as such.  A lot of the same people dismissive of these stories will generally applaud another coming-of-age story about a (cishet, white, neurotypical, etc.) guy.  Why is one "unimaginative and derivative" but the other is "paramount literature"?

It stops people from telling the stories they want to tell, from books and essays getting to the readers who need to know they aren't alone or that they're valuable enough to write about.  It also gives everyone less variety to choose from.
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If you receive feedback that your work has been written before:

1. Consider the titles the person lists in comparison.  Are they recent?  Do they have your slant, or just your topic?  How is their writing style?  Analyze.
This will (mostly) put your fears to rest.

2.  Consider the source.  Do they have varied tastes?  Are they outright dismissive of you and/or your work (maybe a bit cruel)?  How many times have you been told this, just once by this person or by five different people?  What is their background?

Always find multiple people to give you opinions, never let one person deflate the passion you possess.  If nearly everyone you trust tells you that your story is too much like another, examine it then.  Maybe you just aren't taking the right slant or you're distancing yourself from the hard parts.

Remember:  There are no truly original ideas anymore, but there are original "voices".  Use yours.

Ableist Writers, Inaccuracy, and Double Standards

It's important to write the stories we want to see, the books not being written because the majority of people aren't comfortable with those unlike themselves.  It is just as important to our art, however, to write whatever we feel compelled to write.

Society is more accepting of disabled/neurodivergent writers when we stick to disability issues.  (This, of course, doesn't mean able-bodied/neurotypical people will actually want to read works written by us.)  It's more of a... silent permission.  But things turn a bit more acidic when we write outside our sanctioned area of expertise.

Criticism cranks up to full blast, our disabilities/divergences are dissected, and the discussion of our "ability" to write about certain topics all start coming up when one of us dares to write a novel with "normal" people in it.  We are also faced with extra infantilization ("Aww, you wrote a cute, little story") or dismissiveness.

But able-bodied/neurotypical people can write about whatever they want, even if they are inaccurate or disrespectful (unless other people like themselves call them out).  They're told censoring what one writes injures creativity.  They're told to rush headlong into whatever subject ignites their passion.  They are not often told to do research for minority characters like they would a location or certain time period.  Accuracy doesn't matter for an actual group of people but, dress a character in a gown twenty years out of fashion, and the world explodes.
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I know just the sort of backlash I (a fat, disabled, non-Christian, woman) would get if I wrote a story messing up all the able-bodied, Christian male characters (maybe making them all sexist villains with orange hair) but made everyone else diverse and alive.  It wouldn't be good.  Hell, it already isn't great, facing some of those people (ableist fatphobes) in my daily life.

I'm just so aggravated with the double standards.  And the crappy representation.  And having to be twice as good as a writer for many people to see me as half as talented as a "normal" one.  I'm tired of being told I shouldn't write about something with no logical reason why not but someone else can offensively pen something and it be defended as touching free speech or unabridged creativity.  It's exhausting.

Have you had to deal with someone downplaying your accomplishments because you're disabled/neurodivergent?  Has a writer ever been so inaccurate or offensive that it enraged you?  Ever been called a great writer, "for a disabled person"?