Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal | The Common Artist's Creative Struggle

Sometimes, anonymity allows us a fuller degree of expression in our writing, removing the burden of constant proof of evidence that acts as a form of social verification.

I understand when authorities require us to identify ourselves, but I truly hate it; it feels like I have to wave an ID in everyone's face just to make my presence known.

I am who I am - why must I constantly obey these mundane needs to define and categorize myself? It drains me when I have to perform, and it pulls me further away from my next steem exclusive story.

My connection is severed; I am annoyed, and then I am filled with rage because the lines that were meant to be becoming - became undone the moment an interruption killed my momentum.

We've all had that draft - the one we've obsessively edited but could never quite fix. You eventually walk away, frustrated. But notice how our lightbulb moments always strike in the most inconvenient times?

They tap you on the shoulder in the shower or while you're washing dishes, yapping away - exactly when you've got soap on your hands and no way to jot down that one missing piece that would tie all the loose ends of your draft together.

Don't tell me that hasn't happened to you.

I'm half-tempted to wear a marker pen on a string around my neck and just start writing on the wall. Maybe those people who scrawl everywhere aren't insane after all.

Photo by Randy Tarampi on Unsplash

I find myself leaning on certain phrases too heavily, and this is where I struggle as a modern writer: consistency has become a labeled flaw, yet a lack of it isn't what we writers actually want.

We need consistency to ground us, but by becoming too consistent, I fear I might inadvertently commit self-plagiarism - if that's even a valid concern at all - even when I thought I was simply iterating on myself.

I once heard an artist claim she was never inspired by anything - that every idea originated solely within her own mind.

Perhaps that sounds arrogant to me; perhaps I'm simply projecting my own feelings of inadequacy.

Whether it's jealousy or not, I don't know, but I feel compelled to push back against that line.

I wish I could call myself a lone genius, too.

But is immaculate originality even possible in a world where we are all shaped by a constant stream of external forces?

The movies we've watched, the songs we've listened to, the books we've read, the conversations we've held, or even the colors we've seen and the sky we've walked under.

How could all of that not leave its mark on us?

Photo by Kaif on Unsplash

If you cannot feel the world around you, you surely cannot be inspired by it.

Imagine this sci-fi scenario: a being cultivated in a sterile void, a place of blinding white. This being is suspended in liquid, tube-fed, eyes and ears sealed off, never having felt the pull of gravity.

Only in such a total vacuum could one claim to conjure art out of nothingness.

Then comes the emptiness.

I personally feel it's distinct from nothingness. Nothingness is a permanent lack, but emptiness is a state of potential or loss - a place that should contain something or once did.

Maybe not everyone agrees with my distinction, but that is how I see and use these two words.

And it is exactly this kind of emptiness that stirs something within us. Sometimes we couldn't grasp the true fullness of a thing, or perhaps we took things for granted. It is only in the absence that the weight of what was there finally makes itself felt.

Isn't that, after all, the very essence of heartbreak-inspired pieces?

Think of creativity like a photographer capturing a subject. Two people standing before the same subject will inevitably choose different angles, lighting, and focal points.

There is no objective right way to see reality - only a different perspective.

When I look at a photograph, I find myself drawn to the angles the photographer didn't capture, often filling in the gaps to imagine what lies just beyond the frame.

That photographer's perspective stirs a curiosity about everything else that remains unseen - much like how we ponder the person who painted the Mona Lisa and the mystery of its process.

So, we aren't creating out of nothingness.

We're working with the common human experience - the themes, phrases, idioms, and metaphors that have been passed down for the longest time.

Sometimes we can't even trace where a thought originated.

There's that saying: Good artists copy; great artists steal. But don't mistake that for a literal license to pilfer.

For me, it's about taking an idea, feeling its pulse, flipping it inside out, taking it apart, putting it back together, and sleeping on it until it's infused with my own being, so that something different emerges.

Take my work on black fingers, for example - a poison-stained subversion of the green thumb idiom.

It made my fellow writers laugh as we tried to dissect exactly how that shift happened. It was food for thought; I consumed the world to nourish my own voice.

Even then, traces of the original DNA remain.

To me, nothing is truly created ex nihilo; it is only transformed.

I'm curious about everyone else's creative process.
What's your story? How do you write? How do you create your art?

Note:

This started as a weekly writing exercise using prompts from CCC.

My draft was only half-baked, then I watched a Japanese drama where an artist arrogantly declared she wasn’t inspired by anything—that all her work originated solely from her own mind.

It was fictional, of course, but that claim really got under my skin.

I slept on my draft, woke up, and completely rewrote the whole thing. It turned into a much longer piece than I intended- all because of one line from that drama that just didn’t sit right with me.

I hope nobody falls asleep reading this!

©Britt H.

Thank you for reading this.

More about the person behind the writing in My Introductory Post

If you’d like to support my writing — you can consider buying me a coffee here Any support holds immense significance for a disabled neurodivergent like me.

Daily Prompts for FreeWriters

The writing challenges are sponsored by @wakeupkitty Steemit witness @wakucat- Tales & Stories (6 UVF/Steem/SP)