Me, too llong
Since I was a kid I was trying - with a mixture of autobiography/diary and experience-narration style - to write some kind of an account on how to live and tackle certain specific situations (less generalized than self-help books though. More like a log-book or a manual).
Otherwise I write as part of a contribution or evolution of what has already been written. One thing I often do is trying "hybrids".
e.g. I read a science fiction novel while I'm in an oriental country; I try to write something that combines science fiction elements with what I learned from the culture in that oriental country, and mix the different social structures, graphic, architectural and ideologic elements.
I do the same when I compose music as well.