Here “far from” is a contrast (-) and, let’s say imitation is negative. So, answer should be (-) x (-) = (+); something anti- imitation like origninality. But “lack of” itself is negative. So, the answer choice should be something like “imitation”. But the answer is (D) originality. What am I missing here?
Is it some kind of extreme (less extreme case)? Like, “symptomatic of a lack of originality” is a higher stage compared to “imitation” in learning to be creative and considered as opposite of “imitation”?
It’s not just “imitation”, it’s “successful imitation”. So, it’s easier for me to categorize this as a positive. Next, as you said, we have the negative (”far from”) getting cancelled out by the other negative (“lack of”), leading to a positive word in the blank (essentially, a word that reinforces what makes an imitation successful).
The cue for which positive word to use is the comma, which indicates to us that we need a synonym of “creative”. In fact, we can eliminate the entire middle clause to see very clearly the relationship between successful imitation and creativity:
Many artists believe that successful imitation is the first step in learning to be creative.
