Study the greats until you can hear their moves, then break one of their rules on purpose.

CREATIVITY

WHAT THIS MEANS

Originality comes after fluency rather than instead of it. You have to know a form well enough to predict it before departing from it means anything, because a break you did not understand is only a mistake. People who seem to have invented something usually absorbed everything available first and then chose precisely what to discard.

Spend a season copying closely, in whatever you do. Learn why each choice was made rather than only what it was. Then pick one convention and violate it deliberately, watching what happens, because that is where your own version starts.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

Whose work do you copy closely enough to bend it?

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