The Question of Originality

I have a dreadful problem. An enormous problem. I have a problem that a lot of people have--at least, I think that a lot of people have this problem. Creative people, that is. The problem is that I just can't seem to do something (anything) original. Every thing that I do is is inspired by a great work--of art, of fiction, of creativity--that I happened to stumble upon. Now, this in itself would be such a miserable situation--it is reasonable to be inspired by something that is inspiring--the trouble is that I seem to be incapable of creating something detached from these things. Not that I don't want to carry on the morals of miss Alcott, or imagination of L. M. Montgomery, or the scripture-influenced works of C. S. Lewis, but I can't quite manage to keep their plots, and characters, their ideas separate from what I create, meaning that I'm not really creating anything at all, I'm just taking something that I enjoyed experiencing about, and writing or drawing about it in a way that unjustly assumes ownership of that thing, which is simply not acceptable at all.

I wish I could write a conclusion at the end of this post saying how I've found the solution to this problem, but I can't. Every once in a while I think I have found one (staying away from things similar to my present project, using the things I've read of as examples of what I can't do; a sort of challenge to get around, etc. ). I guess the only solution I have is that there isn't one. Perhaps it's that God gives truly original inspiration to some people, so that other people can see it and wonder where it came from. Maybe if everyone had original inspiration, it wouldn't mean the same thing as it does now, maybe it would become ordinary. Or maybe we all have original inspiration and we just don't know where it is. Maybe it gets lost somewhere, shoved down my our rapid intake of other people's ideas. Maybe. In any case, I'm left exactly where I was before: wondering if I'm really creative at all, or if what I think is creative is just a figment of my imagination.