I've been musing over this for about a decade now, and I have finally 
come up with a word which succinctly describes the problem:

Originality.

Apparently I am physiologically incapable of coming up with original 
ideas. Take music, for example. I have almost two decades of recordings 
I've made of myself performing various pieces of music that other people 
have written. But the number of original compositions that I've come up 
with myself can be counted on one hand.

I can take an existing piece of music and make it sound good. I can tell 
you why it sounds good. But sitting looking at a blank piece of score, I 
can only sit there and think "now, what would sound good?"

The same seems to hold for any other field of endeavour you can think 
of. I can look at a piece of work that somebody /else/ has produced and 
tell you why it's good. But I can't think of anything good myself. I 
simply lack any shred of originality. I can only copy other people's 
great works.

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