The ie

That was my idea.

Ever so slowly, I had been developing a storyline about a contemporary descendent of Sherlock Holmes. Named Charlotte, she was to have inherited her famous namesake’s penchant for sleuthing, applying her unusual set of skills in a modern age. A teenage force for good, this Charlotte Holmes was to be a role model of iconoclastic cleverness, an update to an old and beloved narrative, a series of mysteries written for my daughters’ 21st century world.

But then one Sunday in 2017, while skimming through the NY Times book review section, I stumbled upon a review of a new novel entitled “A Study in Charlotte”. I did not recognize the author’s name, Brittany Cavallaro. It did not take long, however, to appreciate that she had beat me to the publishing punch about Sherlock’s descendant.

“Someone stole Charlotte Holmes,” I whined.

“I told you not to wait,” my wife shrugged. “Besides, you always say that ideas, once they are thought, float around in the collective consciousness. They are out there.”

Indeed; I did – and still do – say that. Historical examples are fairly common of simultaneous discovery and invention, especially in the fields of science and medicine. Separated by geography and communication, different labs often work on solving seemingly esoteric conditions. The solutions can bear remarkable similarity. Same approach. Same idea. Almost identical submission timelines for publication.

My wife’s comment was poor salve for my wounded pride and suddenly deflated fiction writer’s balloon. I had not completed my own first novel for Ms. Holmes. In seconds, I watched her still coalescing character and storyline dissolve from my creative psyche, like an old film reel incinerating soundlessly in the furnace of forgotten dreams. It hurt to lose Charlotte to an unrealized fate.

It was not the first time I had experienced such loss. In the late 20th century, I pitched an idea for a news story to a prominent TV medical science personality. Rejected as not having sufficient public interest, that idea became the main topic of a special presentation the fellow did over the national airwaves a few months later. And no, I was neither notified nor engaged in his well-received presentation.

Now that I think of it, there was also the afternoon, early in our current century, when a friend and I came up with a concept for a website where people uploaded their own videos. We thought it best to start small, arty. Haiku for you, we called the site, laughing over a cup of coffee in a Tucson cafe. It could grow though, we said. This could be something big.

This was before something called YouTube.

Who owns creativity? There are plenty of regulations and laws regarding intellectual property, guidances and legal precedents on copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. There is a paucity of perspective, however, on the ideallectual ether (the “ie“), that space “out there” which connects my “in here” with your “in here”. How can any of us know if we are the first to think something? “No ideas are new,” I’ve heard it said (and I’ve heard myself say). Says who? There’s no way of formally refuting the statement, only the instinct that the capacity for originality feels part of the human, even the cosmic, experience. I am unique; as far as I know, no one has ever lived with the same constellation of foibles, features, and unfascinating life plot points. You are unique as well, as are all the living things surrounding us, the bugs we swat at, the birds we marvel at, the skies we hurl our innovations into. Imagine that. Let that sink in. So much life, human and otherwise, in our collective history. And still, inexplicably, so much subtle novelty, newness, idiosyncratic quirkiness. Impossible variation within and across the marvelous range of possibility.

You might say that, mathematically, it is not surprising that Ms. Cavallaro and I came up with the same name for a new literary character. Charlotte’s ancestor Sherlock is part of the vernacular. With so many creative people wracking their brains and spare time in search of fresh looks on well-trodden tales, it was bound to happen. Heck, there could be others out there who have conceived of, drafted, or even submitted drafts of stories on the indomitable, the effervescent Charlotte Holmes. She was mine, those of us who are not named B. Cavallaro may pine. I thought of her first.

We know the assertion cannot be proved. Even if I dug out drafts of drafts from paper and computer files, it would definitively demonstrate nothing: what I had in my head and on computer disc from an old Mac is meaningless. It is also selfish. Centered on ‘me’, it misses the mark, fails to value the wondrous reality that somehow ‘we’, the summation of people past and present, brought into the ever evolving ie something fresh, marvelously pristine. Something original. Brittany Cavallaro deserves the credit; there is no doubt of that. Should I not smile though, should I not take a measure of small comfort in the most minute of chances that my mind, my creativity, connected, even if for the tiniest fraction of time, to the grand ie and, in doing so, helped birth, either through intent or inclination, an original idea?

Maybe not; I suspect that Ms. Cavallaro, or any author who publishes a new series, might be hesitant to share partial credit for that series with a person on the other side of the planet saying “I thought of that too”. Nor should they have to. Because perhaps, when we pass from this form to whatever form lies in wait, it is not about what recognition we have received from our contributions but rather what positive continuance we have left.

Gifts are for the given; the ie relies on givers. We should all teach. We should all learn. We should all create, together. We should each take pleasure in the opportunity to participate, to connect, no matter how fleetingly, with the majestic ie.

So please check out what Amazon describes as Brittany Cavallaro’s “witty, suspenseful new series about a brilliant new crime-solving duo: the teen descendants of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson“. After five years of silly grief, I am finally ready to do the same. How can something that involves Charlotte Holmes be anything but superb?

Go Charlotte! I’m proud of you.