Resisting the Story Grinder

or why I can’t make myself recycle stories.

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

In keeping a daily — or, hell, even a regular — blog, the temptation is always there. The mental process goes something like this.

1. “I can just not write a blog post, right? I mean, it’ll only be one day, and nobody will miss me. I can rest my brain and come up with something even better tomorrow. I bet my stats won’t take too much of a hit.”

Which easily gives way to:

2. “Let me just go into my old posts, find one of the ones that nobody’s read, and re-purpose it into something new. Nobody will notice, right?”

Let me make something clear, right off the bat: I don’t think it’s a bad idea to recycle story ideas. I don’t think it’s wrong to revisit and expand on ideas. I don’t think it’s wrong to give a story that floundered a second chance.

I know there’s quite a bit of debate about it on Medium, about whether or not its intellectually honest or fair or whatever. My take: as long as you’re not copying somebody else’s words and passing them off as your own, I don’t give a flying fuck.

They’re your words. You didn’t sell the rights to them. You own them. You can do whatever the hell you want.