It is incredibly hard to come up with a unique magic system

Every so often I'll read, either on my favorite authors websites or in writing books, about creating a unique magic system. I never really thought about it that much, because I was more in to writing modern fantasy or science fiction, or really light high fantasy, with very little mention of magic. It's only been recently, after reading Branden Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy (have yet to read the third), Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth, and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time that I really started to get interested in writing epic fantasy with a larger focus on magic.

This brought with it the problem that every kind of magic I could think of either wouldn't work under close scrutiny, or had already been used in one form or another. So, a few months ago I created a new word doc and just began making a list of different kinds of magic I could develop. I've worked on it on and off, and did some developing on one based on light.

Two Sundays ago at church, I got the idea of a kind of magic based on song. It took me a while to come up with how it actually worked, and after that everything took off. I loved it, and really wanted to work on it.

That's when I needed a story to go along with it. I tried to come up with one, but I kept finding that it was too similar to Mistborn. So I gave up and set the magic aside.

Now, for the past couple of weeks, the only things I could get written were stories based on my dreams. My normal creativity has been somewhat lacking, so I've been relying on my subconsciousness. It's worked, I've written anywhere from 2k to almost 5k steadily every day, and I can definitely tell that my writing is getting better.

However, Saturday I woke up and couldn't remember any of my dreams. I remembered having them, and remembered that they were cool, but I just couldn't call them to mind. So, when I sat at the computer, determined to write something, I started typing, not really sure what I was creating.

As I continued writing, it became clear (as clear as the sub-zero air in the story) that this was the story for the magic system.

It fit perfectly. Every reason and law I had come up for the magic meshed so perfectly with the frozen landscape I had written, I was amazed that I hadn't thought of it before. So, while it took longer than I have ever prepared for anything, I found the story that fit, and even the characters to go along with it, and am so excited to continue writing it.