When newly released films share plot aspects with your work in progress

My friend Tyler just told me at dinner about the plot of the movie Repo Men. He told me it's about people who're sent to repossess the artificial working organs of people who can't finish paying for them.

In December I started working on "The Trouble With Actual Organs" - in which my main character's organs are backed up (in the computer data backup sense) by technological/artificial organs, which start to replace her organic ones after she's murdered.

Now I feel like people are going to see the premise of my work in progress as a copy of this movie I hadn't known anything about until today.

The whole thing is slightly uncanny, but also a little frustrating at the same time. Anyone else experienced this sort of thing?

After getting comments here and on the WD Fiction Writing group, I guess I should have realized this is a pretty common thing. I think what blows my mind is the aspect that's common between my story and the movie. I don't know where I came up with the idea, but it's even weirder to think other people came up with the same strange idea.
March 13th, 2010 at 11:45pm