Every writer wants to create something new. The most popular story is about creating everything new, an awfully grand meta-myth invented by every culture in history several times each. Any author can create their own characters, but creating characters which then create the author to create them in turn? It would be brilliant if it wasn’t already the most popular fiction ever written. It’s especially unsatisfying when this primal urge to create is directly written down without any interesting action. The created creator is often badly unrealized, conjuring the universe for no adequately explained reason, his ways are left mysterious, and in most modern versions he doesn’t even have a name! That’s just bad writing. The only upside is how any writer will recognize the feeling of the seven-day rush job. Though that doesn’t make up for the obsessive fan club.

Luckily there are a few thousand creation myths to choose from. The best can be found in Robert Grave’s Greek Myths I. Just behold this book’s gorgeousness:

A book as beautiful as an ancient Greek vase, and containing far more

The contents are even better, reading like the great Greek myths retold by a roaring fire by a wonderfully intelligent favourite uncle who’s a poet returned from the first world war to enjoy a cosy study. Which is almost exactly what it is. Graves’ imaginative interpretation has  been criticized for a lack of accuracy. But the  sort of person who thinks you should be serious about swansex of the Gods shouldn’t be listened to, so screw them and enjoy yourself. Which was Zeus’s strategy all along.

The first volume starts with a story every writer should read: the original creator’s creation story!

The Pelasgian Creation Myth

*Pelasgians: Even older Greeks than the Ancient Greeks.

The creatrix Eurynome rose naked from Chaos, and finding nothing to stand on she  divided the sea from the sky. So that’s the first line anyone ever created. Your first line can’t be any harder than that.

She danced south — becoming the only person to be absolutely sure they were dancing  like no-one was watching — and turned the wind this caused into the serpent Ophion. They danced and fun happened and she had sex with the giant snake, because neither Greek myths nor Robert Graves were big on subtlety. Big snakes are better! She became pregnant and also a bird, laying an egg which released everything else to exist was from a single ovoid. (Most other creation myths aren’t quite so compatible with the big bang.)

They lived on Mount Olympus and everything was great until Ophion started being even more of a dick, which was pretty difficult for such an obvious avatar of cock, but he managed it claiming that he was the one who’d authored everything there was.

And now I’m going to quote directly:

“Eurynome and Ophion made their home upon Mount Olympus, where he vexed her by claiming to be the author of the universe. Forthwith she bruised his head with her heel, kicked out his teeth, and banished him to the dark caves below the earth.”

Eurydamn yes, that’s how you respond to plagiarism. She shoots straight into ending everything about his position and his ability to even make the claims. I love the staccato sequence of attacks, the rule of three ass-kickings, you can read the rhythm of high-flying kicks smashing his face and mouth and the rest of him out the window of Olympus.

That’s the creator’s creation myth, with plagiarism as the original sin. It’s also a damn fine origin story for any woman dealing with a guy whose only claim to superiority is both having and being a dick. So screw being a spare rib in other stories: start up your own entire universe, and kick every asshole all the way from the highest peaks to the darkest caverns.

More divine inspiration with The Guide To Better Blasphemy, or more railing against stupid stealing-dicks with 5 Ways Shia LaBeouf Could Be More of a Jerk and Why Shia LaBeouf Is Hollywood’s New King of Jerks.