I have hit a block in my writing for the past few years, as well as in my consumption of media.
I can't come up with a new story.
Sure I can come up with a story you have never read before. If by that you mean characters you have never heard of doing things you have never seen them do.
But when you boil it down it is just tropes all around. Nothing is unique or new. Everything has been done before, the story has been told.
I'm starting to think there are no new stories. I read and I know how the book will go by the first chapter. I watch a show or movie and understand what will happen by the third episode or the twenty minute mark, respectively.
It is frustrating because I remember when I was actually surprised and delighted by stories. They were new and exciting.
I feel like a miner. I hit different ores and follow them through their veins in bedrock until I exhaust them enough to know their continuance.
Don't get me wrong, I still consume voraciously, I just don't have that sense that I am seeing something new, and that sense keeps me from writing.
The last new thing I read was Sandman. And after that I read devoured every "concept as god" media I could find.
But now I am done with it. And I know I could just write a piece of the conversation, and echo of the same things around me. But I have always wanted to be on the frontiers of what is possible in story. And I feel like the frontiers have hit the end of the universe. There is nothing else.
Does anyone else feel this way?