Copy your heroes to learn. Then notice where you can’t help doing it differently. That part is you.

CREATIVITY

WHAT THIS MEANS

Deliberate copying is how most skills get transmitted, and there is nothing shameful in it. What makes it useful is the failure built into it: you will try to reproduce something exactly and keep missing in the same direction. That consistent miss is not sloppiness. It is your own inclination showing up uninvited, and it is the only part nobody else could have produced.

Copy something you admire as closely as you can manage, then set the original beside your version. Circle every place they differ and look for the pattern. Whatever you keep doing wrong on purpose next time is the beginning of a voice.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

Where do you drift from your hero’s way without meaning to?

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