Yet presently you may make the very important discovery that what you were intending to say has already been said by others, and possibly said in a better and more authoritative manner than you could pretend to at present!
On the other hand, you may still consider that you have exclusive information; in that case do your best with it, and you will find your reading has given you a quickened interest and wider grasp of your subject. But if, in absolute honesty to yourself, you know you have nothing new to contribute to the information that has already been published, then do not attempt to offer your article for publication. Write it up, by all means, as a journalistic exercise for your own improvement; it will be helpful if you try how far you can seize, and sum up concisely, the important points that you came across in your various readings on the subject. But don't attempt to pass off writing of this description as original matter. Such methods never get you far.
Even though the Editor may not have studied chimney-pots in detail, and does not recognise that your "copy" is practically a réchauffé of other people's writings, some of the readers will know that it contains nothing original, and will lose no time in telling him so. There is one cheery thing about the public, no matter how busy it may be with its own personal affairs, and preoccupied with a war, or labour troubles, a Presidential election, or little trifles like that, it most faithfully keeps an Editor informed if anything printed in his pages does not meet with its entire approval!
And when an Editor finds he has been taken in with stale material, he naturally marks that contributor for future remembrance.
It is well to bear in mind that one of the most valuable assets in a writer's outfit is a reputation for absolute reliability. Smart practice, trickery, clever dodges, may get a hearing once, even twice—but they have no future whatever.
Let it become a recognised thing that whatever you offer for publication is new matter resulting from your own personal knowledge and investigation, and matter that is sure to interest a section of the general public; that you have verified every detail, and have ascertained, to the best of your ability, that the subject has not been dealt with in this particular way before;—then you are sure of a place somewhere in a mild atmosphere, if not actually in the sun!
Also, common sense should tell you that you are checking the development of your own ability, when you let yourself down (no less than the publisher) by trying to pass off other people's brain-work as your own. It doesn't pay either way.