...is flattery, and there are exactly zero completely original writers.

Please don't apologise for "riffing" (in the Jazz sense) on the work of others. As long as you don't copy great stretches of text, you're doing what every writer does. We learn almost everything worth knowing through copying people who already know how to do it.

Golfers don't learn how to play golf by picking up a club and a ball and visualising everything one might do with them, somehow grokking the essence of golf through Platonic contemplation of the Ideal Game in one's unfettered imagination.

So too, writers learn how to write by reading. Read everything you can. Pick out the writers that you really admire and copy their style. Study how they work the way you might study Tiger Woods, if you wanted to play golf, or Sasha Cohen if you wanted to be an ice skater.

There are only a handful, perhaps two or three handfuls, of basic plots, because we're all human and have the same sets of human problems, or at least *interesting* problems worth writing about. Every story is a variation on one or another of those basic situations. It's how we get there, and whether we enjoy the journey, that counts.

Puddin'
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Here, in a nutshell, are the two sides of writing:

Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at
a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood
form on your forehead.
--- Gene Fowler

Writing became such a process of discovery
that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning:
I wanted to know what I was going to say.
--- Sharon O'Brien