I’m not sure the comparison to Leonard Cohen singing the same applies. I wonder if a more apt analogy would be Leonard Cohen having a contract with one label, say Sony, then turning around and selling the same songs to Blue Note?

I think that in general, society’s hunger for new content is going to break a lot of the content producers. It leads to a lot of ongoing pressure and mental strain with no time for breaks or any release valves. That pace won’t be sustainable for a lot of writers, and I think we’ll have to hope that having more content producers will satisfy the audience and give some relief to the individual writers.

All of this to say, I can see how a guy with a business or marketing background – especially marketing himself – might think it’s perfectly fine to use his own original content repeatedly.

It’s effective advice and the stories are delightful–students love taking his classes. Still, by the third telling, the older students know where the stories are going and start doodling in our notebooks. However, for the students who haven’t heard these stories before, they are fresh and new and helpful.

I’m wondering if Lehrer is treating his writing the way he’s treating his speaking engagements. In a speaking engagement, I would think it’s perfectly acceptable to recycle words and concepts–if he’s found a brilliant example or way to explain a difficult concept, why not illuminate a fresh audience with the same words he used at a prior engagement? The audience is new to it, and they deserve to hear the best stories, ideas, and explanations, no matter if he’s used these words before.

Is it possible he’s doing what my creative writing professor did–simply using the most polished, best, and familiar versions of explanations or lectures he has because, no matter the medium, he will always have fresh audience members who have not heard his spiel before?

I have two books out, and we’re most likely moving publishers for the third book, so I took a lot of time with it and wrote the whole thing, rather than fifty pages on spec, and I have to say, it was a luxury I loved. If people are feeling too much pressure to write too fast, they’re going to have to just say, “Sorry. I can’t do it.” There are plenty of writers out there taking a long time to write books because they’re in it for the writing. Writers feel pressure, I get that, but we also have to stand up for ourselves and just say when it’s too much. Preferably, before you sign the contract, of course.

The publisher should have stood behind him. They buckle too fast these days because they are all so terrifed to say or do the wrong thing because it might make them look politically incorrect.

Unintentional plagiarism, however, is something that scares me to death. I’m from the Atari generation. I’ve had a screenful of pop culture saturating my brain since I can remember. One of my biggest fears is that something I’ve watched or read slips into my writing and I don’t realize it.