About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
— Josh Billings
LEADERSHIP
— Josh Billings
LEADERSHIP
Nothing gets made out of nothing. Every piece of work is assembled from things the maker absorbed, and the difference between imitation and originality is not the borrowing but the judgement applied to it: what you take, what you refuse, and what you combine that nobody had put together. Pretending to have invented your influences fools nobody and mostly stops you learning. Taste is the scarce ingredient.
So study the people you admire closely enough to see how the work is built. Take one specific technique rather than the overall style. Then use it on material they would never have chosen, which is where your version stops being theirs.
Whose ideas shaped your best work more than you usually admit?
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.