“The more virgin our eyes are, the more we have to say” – Orson Welles

For writers and artists, I think it’s easy to get caught up in the idea that, to give your work any value, you need to piggyback on the greatness or genius of established authors whose works have been significant and are now in the public domain. What this really shows is a fear of owning your own voice, opinions, and ideas.

Rather than dig through the public domain looking for works to repurpose, maybe you should step back and try to have some of your own ideas. What you are really seeking is a sort of security blanket—protection from failure and validation that your efforts won’t be wasted—but art never makes such guarantees.

I have personally spent too much time thinking about the public domain. That is time that would be better spent just making works of my own and trying to live with them. I think we are all afraid that our ideas are not very good. It’s easier to parrot the words of those canonical geniuses who have walked before us and pray that some of their greatness will rub off on us. We beg them to lend us their authority. But I’m afraid that is the coward’s path. It’s not the path of the true artist. Sorry.

Take Hollywood as an example. It’s kind of rare that a director’s first big movie is an adaptation. A lot of directors hit the ground running with an original story. And when a popular director adapts a classic work, we appreciate it only insofar as the director brings their own new vision to the reinterpretation.

So ultimately, you cannot run from yourself.

For many artists and writers, the first encounter with “the canon” can feel like standing at the base of a mountain range. Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Austen, Tolstoy—the list goes on, stretching behind us like towering monuments. To even pick up a pen or brush in their shadow can feel absurd. How can any of us today hope to live up to that? And worse: if we don’t find a way to surpass them, to push art into “new territory,” haven’t we failed before we’ve even started?

This anxiety is widespread, but it rests on a false premise: that art is supposed to be about originality and progress. It isn’t.

The Myth of Progress in Art

In science, “progress” makes sense. Knowledge builds. We know more about the structure of the atom today than we did a hundred years ago. Medicine improves; technology advances. But art doesn’t work this way. You can’t say that Beethoven is an “improvement” on Bach, or that Toni Morrison represents an upgrade to Virginia Woolf. Different eras produce different works that speak to their circumstances and audiences. Art changes, but it doesn’t progress.

To think otherwise is to set yourself an impossible task. You can’t outdo Homer at being Homer any more than you can outdo Picasso at being Picasso. You can only be yourself, making the work only you can make, in your time.

Originality Is Overrated

The obsession with originality—this pressure to say something never before said—can paralyze us. But originality is not a prerequisite for meaningful art. Most art emerges from dialogue: with predecessors, with peers, with the present moment. Shakespeare’s plays drew heavily on earlier stories. T.S. Eliot called tradition not a burden but a vital web of connections in which every new work takes its place.

Originality, when it exists, is rarely about inventing something from nothing. It’s about the particular inflection you give to old forms, the way your voice carries echoes yet still resonates in its own key.

The Canon Is Not Law

Finally, let’s reconsider the canon itself. Too often it’s presented as a fixed scripture, a definitive record of what counts as “great art.” But the canon is not law—it’s a conversation, a product of historical choices, cultural biases, and shifting values. It expands and contracts over time. It’s been rewritten to include voices once ignored. And it should continue to evolve.

This means you’re not beholden to it. You can wrestle with it, reject it, embrace it, remix it. You can be indifferent to it altogether. The canon is not your master; it’s a library.

What Art Actually Asks of You

If there’s any “duty” in making art, it’s not to be original or to move humanity forward like a research lab. It’s simply to attend to your work with honesty. To make something that feels necessary for you. To engage with your time, your materials, your questions.

Art is not a ladder stretching upward into history, where you must climb higher than those before you. It’s more like a field: vast, varied, with room for all kinds of voices, including yours.

So, when you feel the crushing weight of the canon, remember: you don’t have to bear it. You don’t have to compete with the dead, or prove your work “progresses” the field. You only have to write, paint, compose, or create in your way, now. That’s not just enough—it’s the only thing art has ever asked.

One of the big challenges with public domain works is that most of the “canon” has already been adapted a hundred different ways. Pride and Prejudice, Dracula, Hamlet — they’ve been modernized, reimagined, and parodied so often that it can feel almost impossible to find a fresh angle. Sometimes, inventing something new seems easier than wrestling with the weight of history.

So how do you avoid that trap? A few approaches:

• Look past the canon. Dig into obscure, forgotten novels, pulp stories, or overlooked poems. Check out https://publicdomainreview.org/

• Shift perspectives. Tell the story through a side character or outsider. Example: Wide Sargasso Sea

• Play with genre. A noir Iliad, a cyberpunk Beowulf — the frame matters as much as the plot.

• Translate across time and culture. Drop a classic into a completely different context. — Example: 10 Things I Hate About You, Clueless

• Hybridize. Use the old as scaffolding, but let new plots and ideas take over. — Example: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters

But what if none of the works on the list “speak” to you? That’s common too. You might look inward for what you want to say and come up blank. That’s normal — and sometimes “what do I want to say?” is the wrong question.

Instead, try:

• Asking what fascinates you, annoys you, or lingers in your imagination.

• Lowering the stakes — experiment, remix, even be a little disrespectful to the source.

• Watching for sparks — an image, a line, or a situation that catches your attention.

• Starting small — rewrite a single scene or fragment just for fun.

You don’t have to know your grand “message” before you start. Often, you only discover what you want to say through the act of making.