Thursday morning, February 5th. The aspiring writer stares at a blank page, terrified of clichés. She's read advice saying "find your unique voice," "be original," "say something new." So she avoids anything that sounds familiar. She strips out the metaphor that came naturally because someone else probably used it. She contorts her prose into awkward shapes to avoid sounding like anyone else. The result? Stilted, lifeless writing that's trying so hard to be original it circles back to derivative—just derivative of "trying to be original" instead of any particular author. I've watched this happen a thousand times. The desperate pursuit of originality produces the most unoriginal work.

The Thesis

The more deliberately you try to be original, the more derivative you become. True originality doesn't come from avoiding influence or trying to be different—it comes from deeply engaging with what already exists until your unique synthesis naturally emerges. The originality trap is this: by treating influence as contamination rather than nutrition, you starve yourself of the raw material needed to create something genuinely new.

This is everywhere once you see it:

  • The writer who won't read their genre because they "don't want to be influenced," producing work that accidentally recapitulates tired tropes because they don't know what's been done
  • The musician who deliberately avoids their favorite artists' techniques, ending up with technically "original" music that lacks soul or coherence
  • The founder who insists their product is "completely unlike anything else," missing the ways existing solutions already solve parts of their problem
  • The academic who refuses to engage deeply with existing literature to maintain "objectivity," reinventing wheels and missing crucial context
  • The artist so focused on being "different" they become indistinguishable from all the other people trying to be different in exactly the same way

The pattern is always the same: treating originality as the goal instead of the byproduct. Real originality emerges when you engage so deeply with influences that you metabolize them into something that could only come from you.

Why This Happens

We misunderstand what originality means:

We think originality means "not like anything else." So we try to create in a vacuum, avoiding influence, steering away from anything familiar. But that's not how originality works.

Nothing is truly unprecedented. Shakespeare borrowed plots. Jazz musicians quote each other constantly. Scientists build explicitly on prior work. The "original" iPhone synthesized existing technologies. Great work isn't created from nothing—it's created from everything, but metabolized so thoroughly it becomes something new.

Real originality is recombination. It's taking influences A, B, and C and synthesizing them through the unique filter of your experience, taste, and perspective. The originality isn't in avoiding influence—it's in the distinctive way you combine and transform influences.

It provides an excuse for shallow engagement:

Here's the uncomfortable truth: deeply engaging with existing work is hard. It requires reading thoroughly, practicing seriously, understanding deeply. It means confronting how much you don't know and how good other people already are.

"I'm trying to be original" lets you skip that work. You don't need to read the classics—they'd contaminate your unique voice! You don't need to master fundamentals—that's derivative! You can stay comfortably in your lane, calling your lack of engagement "originality."

But you can't transcend conventions you haven't mastered. You can't synthesize what you haven't absorbed. You can't create something new from influences you've deliberately avoided.

The advice itself is flawed:

"Find your unique voice." "Be original." "Say something new."

This advice makes originality sound like something you can deliberately manufacture. Like there's a voice-finding process or an originality technique.

But your "unique voice" isn't something you find—it's something that emerges naturally when you stop performing uniqueness. Originality isn't achieved through originality-seeking—it's the inevitable result of deeply engaging with influences until they pass through the unique filter of your experience and perspective.

The advice should be: "Engage so deeply with what you love that you can't help but transform it into something only you could make."

The Way Out

Steal everything. Transform unconsciously:

The paradox is that the best way to be original is to stop trying. Instead:

Consume voraciously. Read everything. Listen to everything. Study what you love and what you hate. Don't worry about contamination—worry about malnutrition.

Copy deliberately when you're learning. Jazz musicians learn by playing standards. Writers learn by imitating styles. Artists copy masters. This isn't shameful—it's how you internalize techniques.

Then create without thinking about originality. Make what interests you. Solve the problems in front of you. Follow your taste. Your unique combination of influences, experiences, and perspective will do the work of originality automatically.

Originality is output, not input:

You can't force originality by trying to be original. You can only create conditions where originality emerges:

  • Deep engagement with existing work (know what's been done)
  • Diverse influences (unusual combinations create new perspectives)
  • Your unique constraints and context (your limitations become your signature)
  • Enough volume that your style emerges (patterns across multiple works)
  • Genuine problems you're trying to solve (necessity breeds innovation)

Do these things and originality happens without effort. Try to manufacture originality directly and you'll produce the exact same "trying to be original" style as everyone else avoiding influence.

The real work is digestion, not avoidance:

The goal isn't to avoid influence. It's to metabolize it so thoroughly it becomes unrecognizable as direct borrowing.

Shakespeare takes a familiar story and transforms it through his language and insight. Coltrane takes a standard and transforms it through his technique and emotion. Scientists take existing theories and transform them through new evidence and reasoning.

This is the actual work: not avoiding what came before, but engaging with it so deeply that your synthesis becomes something new. Digesting your influences until they become you, then creating from that synthesized self.

The Takeaway

Stop trying to be original. Start engaging deeply.

Read voraciously in your field. Study what you love. Copy when learning. Synthesize unconsciously when creating. Let your unique perspective do its work without forcing it.

Originality isn't something you achieve—it's something that happens when you stop trying to achieve it and start creating from your fully-digested influences.

The originality trap promises that avoiding influence will make you unique. The truth is that avoiding influence makes you shallow. Deep engagement with everything that came before is how you create something genuinely new.

Paradoxically, the way to be original is to stop trying.

Today's Sketch

February 05, 2026