Summer Shorts - Originality

The great David Lodge's fantastically helpful book The Art of Fiction contains some interesting and original thoughts on, well, originality.  He says, "The essential purpose of art is to overcome the deadening effects of habit by presenting familiar things in unfamiliar ways." You should take this to heart, as it is a crucial part of what makes a story interesting. To sharpen up your way of looking at things, follow his advice and take something with which you are incredibly familiar -- it could be a place, or a person, or even or a fairy story plot - and rework it into something fresh and unusual.  Stamp your own personal vision onto it, because no matter how mundane it is nobody will see it in quite the way that you do.