How do I improve my Compostions and Arrangements

[surreal]

You can also recreate the music that you love.
[...] as provide[s} you with a better understanding of why you love it.

[...] highly subjective defining what is "meaningful and sensible melodies."

By recreating passages and whole compositions that you consider to be meaningful and sensible, you'll be able to isolate the things that resonated with you personally to better understand how to better convey what you wish, in your own unique way.

Was considering this approach... then I felt guilty as its like cheating.. but then its all in the learning process.. maybe I am hard on myself.. but I wanna be original and not a copout...

Your goal is not to make something similar to the others or to steal. Music is like a language, you express your thoughts and feelings but you use words and grammatical structures that already exist and it's not you who invented them. And you have to listen before you start to speak. Do you feel guilty when speaking?
The goal to be original is the biggest illusion we can have. It's possible but partially.

"original" will have to be defined in order to parlay its meaning, though, isn't it...

Music *is* a language, absolutely right you won't have originated its grammar and it will be some time (if ever) before your syntactical devices will be news to anyone. So it can't be cheating, it's absolutely necessary to recreate when you start out.

This adage has been attributed to many, incl. Stravinsky 'A good composer borrows, a great composer steals', meaning you now own that thing you took.

I agree regarding creating 'away from the instrument', but particularly as pertinent to someone at the beginning of their journey but in the currency of today, away from the computer. In fact, if you want to get a sense of melody, sing it and rely on your voice in connection with your (nascent) musical mind. I saw someone ask in another thread where to go that did not involve solfege, and my view is truly there is nowhere, that's (whether it's do re mi fa or sa re ga ma) just completely basic to get your ear working with a basic verbalization (recognition) of notes' location.
(when I make up a melody outside my room, I can notate it in saregama and an indication of, you know, is 2, 3, 6 or 7 flat or 'white'. along with a crude rhythmic notation I developed, the tune can fit on a napkin.)

Let's say your instrument is guitar. If you rely strictly on the guitar for your melody, you're liable to stay with finger patterns and the convenience of that. Which is going to limit you (and later on it may occur to you how bored you are with yourself).

This basic caveat or perhaps requirement out of the way, or course Stravinsky 'likes to touch the notes' and we'll tend to be inspired by the sound in itself. It's not necessary (or so advisable) to make a dichotomy between 'at the instrument' vs 'away from'.

Hi Jancivil, your methodology is intresting! I tried the singing approach and recorded it.... now to sit and transcribe it into something useful!

Thanks for your input!!