Urge to cannibalize your work...

Perfectly normal. If an old passage works better elsewhere, switch it.

I would be wary of repeating passages simply because I liked them, but I don't think that's what you mean.

Do others feel this urge to take from your existing work?

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Yep. The first novel I wrote poured out of me in the span of three weeks. Very personal novel, and it holds a special place in my heart for sure, but it's insane as is and I know it won't fly.

That said, some stuff in that novel is pretty good, but even so, it took me a long time to accept the fact that it wasn't viable, and never would be. Eventually, though, I started plucking from it.

Two reasons that's a good thing: one, because I have a ready-made resource of decent material that is familiar to me and wholly mine; and two, because when I do find myself plucking from that novel, I'm glad. That first novel changed my life. I'm happy that parts of it may still have a chance to shine.

I once cannibalized the background plot of an old story and attached it to a new one, because the old story just wasn't working.

There's a difference between old published work, and old unpublished work.

I try not to cannibalize anything. It's extremely rare that I do so because I've always found that new teaches me more, and sells faster, than old. I will sometimes throw away/delete an old story that didn't sell, but it's still in my mind, of course, and once it sinks deep enough into the swap of my subconscious, it may emerge in a totally new form, and then I'll write it again.

Too, every now and then an editor will ask for a story based on some part of an older, published work, and I'm all over this.

Cannibalizing may be fine, but it's also dangerous for new writers. Too many new writers spend all their time tinkering with old work, trying to rewrite old work, cannibalizing old work, etc, usually, I think, because it's easier than writing some new and original.

I think learning come from continually striving to be new and original, not from tinkering with old in any way.

I used to worry about cannibalizing my old ideas, but I don't anymore. If I want to do it, I do it.

I only cannibalize old words if I'm absolutely certain I'm never going back to the old work, though.

I always steal from myself. I mean ALL. THE. TIME.

Don't think it's a problem, to be honest, but if I did, I would maybe tweak an old idea rather than copy and paste. Put an original twist on it.

At the end of the day, most writing is derivative of something else.

Another reason I very, very seldom cannibalize is because it's rare, very rare, that I have anything old to cannibalize from. Until and unless there isn't a single market left in the known universe that might like it, I keep the piece in circulation. Sooner or later, sometimes a lot later, almost everything sells, even when market after market after market sends form rejections. If it's any good at all, someone will want it. If it isn't any good at all, I sure don't want to use parts of it in a new story.

But there certainly isn't anything ethically or artistically wrong with cannibalizing your old work. It's your work, you own it, so you can use it any way you like without worry.

inoue77 said:

I keep getting an urge to cannibalize my work

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You can't be that hungry. Make a sandwich.

Seriously, be very sure that the work you're talking from is definitely not going to be published, and remember that many authors, once they have one book published, go back and publish their back catalogue too, so your trunked novel could be out there one day. And as a reader, there are few things more annoying than thinking you've found new material by someone you like and then finding out it's half retread of stuff you've read before.

Yes, absolutely. I've written one novel (unpublished of course) and recently took bits and pieces of it and wrote a short story.

Yes, absolutely. I've written one novel (unpublished of course) and recently took bits and pieces of it and wrote a short story.

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Darn! How'd you do it? I tried turning one excised bit from my novel into a short story and...got nowhere. Doesn't a short have to have beginning middle and end? Mine was all middle with awkwardly tacked on intro and conclusion.

Sigh....

Raymond Chandler only wrote seven novels and several were cobbled together from short stories he had written previously. It ain't what you do, it is how you do it.
I have read the novels and the short stories both and can't see any problems of melding the stories together for a novel.

I agree with the difference being old published vs old unpublished. If it's already been published, then best to leave it alone. You don't want to repeat yourself. If it hasn't been--and never will be--then it's not a bad idea to take the best elements from that old story and combine it with something new. The end product could be just what you've been looking for.

inoue77 said:

I keep getting an urge to cannibalize my work, to take from my old work and put it in my new one, and I think certain passages would work well here or there,

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Oh, I do this all the time. I think a lot of us do. I'd be surprised to find out we don't, actually ...

Personally I've never seen anything wrong with it, but if I were in your shoes I think I would try and make myself manually rewrite the section in question (Even if it does end up being almost identical) and just use the original as a template. I know whenever I rewrite scenes from scratch they typically end up better than before, even if I am working with the same basic ideas. Not sure why, but that's the pattern I've noticed.

inoue77 said:

I keep getting an urge to cannibalize my work, to take from my old work and put it in my new one, and I think certain passages would work well here or there, and I fight down the urge to put them in.

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If the previous work in question is unpublished, by all means, you should strip it down for parts.

Personally, I draw the line at recycling characters. I feel as though when I finish something, I've really finished it, for better or for worse. Taking a character from an old work and putting her in a new story may lead, for me anyway, to temptation to keep re-writing the previous story, in which case I'd never be done with anything. That being said, plenty of novelists do recycle their characters. Brett Easton Ellis and Jenn Crowell both do this, and quite successfully, I might add.

Currently, no. Whenever I do happen to read one of my old passages, I usually cringe and think about the billion things that can be done better in it. Sometimes a bunch of phrases and structures end up getting reused, though. Might just be writing habit or something.

Old unpublished work is there to harvest, as far as I'm concerned. My first novel has words from previous attempts and unpublished short stories that didn't work in their other forms but do work in this form. Assuming it doesn't suck, why waste it?

Anna Spargo-Ryan said:

Assuming it doesn't suck, why waste it?

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Sometimes I fix things and keep them. Or keep them and fix them later ...