I read immensely and write things out of the impressions I have from the books I have read. What I fear is I cannot be original in writing since I am conditioned to think following a particular pattern. This does not make me a good writer and I will be doing injustice to my readers. I want to write totally differently, originally, inventively something unwritten, untold of stories of other-worldliness, extraordinaire. When I read books all I find is the mold into which all come as writers. In fact all we do as writers is say the same thing told by our predecessors only by changing the style and by stuffing it with new sets of words. We are plagiarizers in essence. It is not only sentences or paragraphs that were plagiarized it is also themes or something deeper and profounder. I think we have no poets or writers in which we find total originality and inventiveness
'Twas always thus, haribol. Your writing will be original because you are a unique being. Maybe you should try reading some David Foster Wallace.
Not so fast. There are only a relatively few themes that are possible in human fiction (the number has been placed as low as three, depending on how broadly one categorizes). Does that mean that once one has read "Romeo and Juliet" one need not bother with "West Side Story" (or vice versa)? Themes recur in fiction because they are emblematic of continuing human struggles. New stories give them new life and new relevance - from "Canterbury Tales" to "A Canticle For Leibowitz", stories retain their originality by their settings and circumstances, and by the way the same old issues recur in new ways. The challenge to the new writer is to link those themes with what concerns the here and now.
This is a lovely point. Many of the broad strokes have already been used, so the best thing you can do, from my view, is not fret about how unique your plot or structure may be and accept that the differences in your specific, contemporary context will affect the personality of your characters and their reactions to situations you've drawn up.
ditto what cog said so succinctly and eloquently... [which, according to google, is an entirely original observation!] you can be as original in your writing as your mastery of words and your breadth of imagination allow... being limited in either will hamper your ability to be original... so, to paraphrase the bard, 'the fault, dear haribol, lies not in our fellow writers, but in ourselves'...
