Originality isn’t inventing something from nothing. It’s telling the truth about your own life in detail.

Nothing gets invented from nothing, and chasing that version of originality mostly produces work that is strange without being specific. What nobody can duplicate is the detail of your life: the route home, what your kitchen sounds like at seven, the phrase your friend says when she is lying. Specificity is the part that cannot be guessed. Generic is what happens when you leave it out to seem universal.

Put three true details into what you are making that you would normally trim for being too small. Not symbols, just facts. The more precise they are, the more people recognize themselves in them, which seems backwards until you try it.