Hey, It’s New To Someone
Why I’ll Keep Sharing “Old” Content
As the firstborn of the firstborn, one might assume I was tricked out in the newest fashions for infants and toddlers from the moment I came home from the hospital. That would be an assumption made by someone not from a large extended family. Cousins, my friend, many many cousins who had outgrown oodles of hand-me-downs.
Interestingly, my younger sisters hated wearing my hand-me-downs while we all awaited the latest haul from the cousins as if it was Christmas. It sucks to be stuck wearing the same stuff you see your older sister wearing. But the piles of clothes from the cousins were new to us.
So that meant they were new.
Eight hundred plus and counting
That’s how many pieces of fiction, non-fiction, and the odd bit of mediocre poetry I’ve published on this platform. And here’s something I didn’t expect: when I idly scroll through the very long list of those pieces I keep finding things I’m interested in reading.
I wrote that? Well, what do you know! Curiously enough, I’ve written a boatload of things that I still find fun and informative to read.
I read recently that this platform reaches 170 million readers. Call me optimistic, among other rude things, but that means that as many times as I’ve re-shared some of my most popular pieces there are still roughly 169,999,243 readers to whom this will appear as new. Who am I to deprive them of the pleasure of reading it for the first time?
Many of those super-duper helpful how-to articles that proliferate on this platform like mushrooms in wet forests attest to the importance of daily publication.
Like I’m going to argue with the experts? For the better part of 16 months, there I was busily writing and publishing every blessed day. I also got on the daily promotional bandwagon going hog wild on numerous social media sites. I was the poster child for overachiever of the year. What did it get me? Well, it did not get me rich nor have I achieved the status of rock star on the platform. But all that work has not been a waste.
For one thing, here you are. You. Reading this. That’s a major accomplishment to my way of thinking.
For another, there are those eight hundred plus pieces of writing. Some are damned good, even I can say that. Some, not so much. But I’d say nearly every one of them is still worth three to five minutes of anyone’s life. We’re all churning out new content and busying ourselves promoting TF out of it, but many of us have a strong backlog of great work.
Our echo chamber
I’m sure there are hundreds of writers on this platform who don’t need to promote their work and another hundred thousand or so who aren’t interested in the grind of promotion. Good for them. Of course, I don’t see their work so there’s that.
The rest of us are at it daily.
As I make my rounds of promotional busy work, too often my fellow writers are sharing the exact same story to every group. Hmmm. Dislike. Come on, kids, you don’t have to only share your shiny newest work. Go on, widen your range. Show us what ya got. Pro tip: don’t introduce an older piece by saying it’s an older piece. That doesn’t matter. There does exist a baseless prejudice against older work. Just share that baby and then get back to work on the new stuff.
Like I’m doing right now!
© Remington Write 2020. All Rights Reserved.
