Creativity is assembly

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I firmly believe the saying that there is nothing new under the sun. I've dabbled in writing my whole life but didn't realize how aggregate my work is until the past few years. I pick up on parts of things I enjoy and jam them together in different ways. There are a set few kinds of story. Goku is Hercules. The Transporter and Hitman are the same movie. They just look different because of slightly varied parts. It's a fairly effective trick that I frankly enjoy. I don't feel any ill feelings after this realization. It makes me see that I'm a better writer due to the amount of details I can draw in and redistribute. My massive obsessive catalog of the seemingly mundane and aimless makes me more creative. The quirky view I've always had gives me an edge. A semblance of originality. I just have more parts to make a more complex puzzle. My creativity is reassembly. Fusion.

it's from the bible that saying, 'there is nothing new under the sun'.

Interesting idea

That's true. Everything writers, or any type of artists for that matter, do has been done before. To me, you have to take everything someone did before, but the trick is to make it yours, to tweak it but not make it derivative like Eragon did; however, I think the only element that can make your work truly original is your voice, or personality some might call. That way it's one of a kind, since no one can duplicate your voice. Why does Faulkner sound like Faulkner, or Stephen King sound like Stephen King, yet when someone tries to write like them, their work's boring, a mess, a phony of the original? I think this is what Paolini still has to learn since his writing sounds like Tolkien, just more of a mess and boring than Tolkien's (not saying Tolkien's boring or a mess--in fact, he's a genius to me--just Paolini's.) Put any author whose voice you can hear, whose personality speaks out to you, whose emotion you can feel as if they're right there with you. That's what I'm about talking about when you speak about voice.

That's all I have to say about being creative.

To quote... chillax.

I agree, OP - as a composer and arranger, I find that my work is constantly infused with ideas from elsewhere and at times more resembles a collage than an original work. But in speaking with W. Francis Macbeth, he said something that has stuck with me... "There are few truly original things in this world; all of creativity, all that came before us, was built on the back of something earlier. If you find something that works, take it, use it, make it your own expression." And that is what I have reminded myself of when I fretted over whether to use an embellishment or nuance in a passage.


M.

Ah, but who made that claim, Sand?


M.

The book of Ecclesiastes.

Supposedly there's only 7 types of stories in the world

I've heard that but what are they?

boy meets girl
fish out of water...

Although Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story are basically the same plot to consider that West Side Story created nothing new would indicate an exceedingly imperceptive mind.