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How to Be Original
The true source of originality, and how to find it for yourself
This weekend, I was one of the speakers at a virtual conference in Spain. The title of my talk, “How to Be Original”, started off a bit tongue in cheek, as perhaps my favorite thing to complain about is people copying my work without credit. Although I know it’s intended as the sincerest form of flattery, there are times where I misinterpret it as laziness, a lack of faith in their own creative genius, or simply theft.
My favorite example, now many years in the past, was a man in Australia who not only copied my website word for word, he copied my bio, substituting only his name. When I marveled at the fact that he too had children named Oliver and Clara, I did a bit more research to discover that he was neither married nor a father.
But putting my psychological immaturity to one side, it strikes me that in a world where so many of us are genuinely looking to give voice to our creative potential and make our mark in and on the world, learning how to be original has a genuine value.
So here’s the short course:
“Original” is not the same as “different.”
There is a theory in Hollywood movie making circles that the glut of child-centered family comedy films in the early 1990’s was…
