American Gods

So a while back I had an idea for a story in which all the gods of mythology really existed and were engaged in a power struggle set in the modern world.

I told this idea to a friend while driving in his car one day.

"It's already been done. American Gods. Neil Gaiman," he said.

I was quite let down.

Halfheartedly, I took it out of the library and read about a quarter of it. I appreciated what I read as excellent writing and a far more mature and powerful version of what I had planned. It quashed my desire to write that story, and to write any story at all for some time.

Since then, I've come to understand that all the stories that can ever be told have already been done. Everything that you've ever seen is a copy of something from 20-50 years ago, which is a copy of something 50-100 years ago, which was a parody of something 150-500 years ago, going all the way back to the dawn of man. Even then, the stories that they told were the reflections of archetypes they observed and believed, already shown before them in nature.

The goal of the writer (or other creative type) is to take these core images, goals, beliefs, archetypes and experiences and reassemble them in a fresh way to society.

So with that in mind, I'm reading/rereading American Gods and am slightly past the point that I stopped at before. I'll find out how similar my idea really is to his.

Of course, it's been about two and a half year since I first starting reading the book, and my own idea has evolved significantly.

In the original idea, the gods evolved and changed with time - morphing, splitting, growing - and that the current lack of divine intervention in the world was due to a war in the heavens that left Zeus abdicating his throne and no clear leadership among the gods. A young Dionysus, manifested as a woman, was seeking unite enough of the gods together to claim the vacant seat on Mount Olympus.

Or something like that.

The most recent versions of the story focus on a man named Sid who gets caught up in a war of the gods.

SPOILER ALERT

So I took a Buddhism class, the idea that challenged and inspired me most was Siddhartha Gautama's idea that gods, spirits and the like existed but didn't matter; what was most important was each individual's personal attainment of enlightenment.

Furthermore, he set forth that all living creatures needed to attain salvation and nirvana, but that human beings here had an advantage over the gods. Human beings are in the stage of their existence where enlightenment can most easily be reached; humans are intelligent enough to understand their situation, unlike animals, but fragile enough to be acutely aware of the inevitability of death. Gods, with their long life-spans and immense power, find it hard to humble themselves and face their weakness.

The idea that even the gods need salvation is the foundation of the most recent incarnations (if you'll pardon the pun) of my story.