The joy of remixing
Remixing is satisfying and has a relatively low barrier of entry
It’s easy to assume the things you interact with on a daily basis — your environment — is fixed. But in reality, almost everything can be modified. That doesn’t mean everything should be modified. When you make enough modifications, that original thing becomes something new.
Remixing is a happy middle ground
Remixing allows you to take an existing piece of work and make modifications to it. While the term primarily refers to modifying songs, I’m borrowing it to refer to all types of creative projects.
Buying a premade or frozen meal and jazzing it up or combining it with something else
Refurbishing old furniture or doing an “Ikea hack”
Creating a “mod” for an existing video game
Writing a add-on or extension for an existing software program
Writing fan fiction
Even if your contribution is minimal, there is something inherently rewarding to putting your stamp on something.
At the end of the day, unless you’re a homesteader growing their own wheat, almost nothing that humans create is “from scratch.” As the saying goes, we stand on the shoulder of giants.
We take components from someone’s work and we combine, reuse, and repurpose them into something new. Our resulting product may end up being a component in someone else’s product. And the cycle continues.
Remixing isn’t all about just stamping your contribution on top of other peoples’ work. It can be about translating something to a new context. Taking it and reshaping it to serve a new purpose. You could risk bastardizing or misappropriating it, or you could breathe new life into something it.
Remixing can unblock your writers block
Creating things is really rewarding but sometimes creating something “from scratch” is daunting.
Common blockers to these projects include:
I don’t have the skills
I don’t have the time
I don’t have the support system
I don’t have collaborators
This is too expensive
These doubts are all valid. And when faced with them, it’s easy to give up on the creative process altogether. Remixing can be a good way cast these constraints aside, and scratch your creative pitch itch by modifying an established product.