Most of our writing ideas come from reading things around the interwebs. Thinking of it as “theft of intellectual property” feels a bit harsh to me. Instead, I prefer to think of it as “inspired inspiration”, a more clean look to the idea.
Just the other day, over at Baseball Prospectus, there was an article about how the Rockies have a player that needs saving. It’s a good article, one worthy of your time (as everything there is), but there was something that struck me while reading it. It was in the first paragraph of the article, which is paywalled, but I’ll put here:
There will be few clear sellers, and a couple of them (you know the ones) really won’t have anything to sell, and the buyers will be queuing up for the scarce available talent—especially because several of the contenders have overlapping or competing needs.