Copying teaches your hands. Creating teaches your voice. You need both.

Imitation and invention train different things, and skipping either one leaves a gap you can hear. Copying builds technique, because you are forced to reproduce choices better than your own. Making something from nothing builds taste, because now the choices are yours and you find out what you actually like. Neither on its own gets you there.

Spend part of this week copying something you admire as closely as you can manage, and part of it making something bad that is entirely yours. Do not mix the two sessions. One is for skill and the other is for finding out what you have to say.