Writing Influences

I am hugely influenced. I get influenced by all kinds of things. I will sit in a ethnic restaurant and if the server has an accent, I will sometimes adopt it when I talk to them. I don't do this to mock or even on a conscious level. I simply hear it and begin to inflect it myself.

I find the same thing happens when I write. Writing has an enormous power over me; it can influence my mood, my thoughts, my conversation. I remember the first time I read Little Women. I read it much later than most girls, I imagine. I didn't really have many people recommending books to me; even though I loved to read, I found most of the books from my childhood on my own. There was some help from librarians, and my mother collected books, and I would pilfer her shelves, although she didn't really recommend them. However, my cousin, who was in college at the time, said her favorite book was Little Women, and she was appalled I had never read it.

I am a procrastinator to the -enth degree. So instead of immediately going and reading it, it took me a few months, but I did eventually pick it up, and I did read it. And I loved it. And for the next two weeks, EVERYTHING related to that book. Somehow it never entered my head that everyone had not just read this book for the first time. No one else was continually thinking about the book, how it related to them, how similar this situation was like the book. Not everyone was upset by Jo and Laurie not getting together right then. But all their apathy didn't really phase me. I continued to think about it until eventually, my obsession faded.

This past month, I read The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. In the middle of reading Catching Fire, the person I was borrowing the book from wanted the book back for the weekend. It was torture. I was left involved in people's lives where I couldn't continue their stories. My mind was fixated on them, mulling over their dilemmas and obsessing over how the novel would end. Even my mood was affected by them. I began to think about my own life, and make choices based on how I felt about the people's position in the book. Needless to say, I devoured the book as soon as I had it back in my hands.

My writing is influenced in much the same way. After reading something, I feel much more inspired to write, but often, the writing comes out in the same voice as the author I just finished reading. Not always of course, but often. I had just finished reading The Bell Jar and I was writing a small piece to enter into a writing competition. I sent my story to a friend of mine overseas who didn't have any idea of what I was reading, and in her critique, she mentioned that my writing sounded like Sylvia Plath. My words formed themselves to the similar pattern I had just been reading.

The same thing happened in high school. After spending over a month reading Shakespeare, I began to think in Elizabethan English. I could write it, speak it, understand it with ease. It became a natural way of thinking. My friends and I in the class would spend time later talking to each other in Elizabethan English. "Doth" no longer seemed such a foreign word, and would flow into the conversation with sense and ease. I saw plays and had no trouble at all understanding what was happening, what they were saying. I caught all the jokes, adored his puns. To this day, I enjoy Shakespeare's plays. But if I don't do some background research, refresh my memory about the contents of the play, I don't enjoy it as much, and I miss a lot. I never catch all his jokes and there can be moments of confusion. My Shakespearean thoughts have faded with time, but I have no doubt if I started reading and watching it frequently, I would fall back in.

After reading Agatha Cristie, I find my vocabulary and astuteness of descriptions increases. I think much more formally. I find myself describing people in my head, and can picture just how Hercule Poirot would view that person, and how Cristie would describe the conversation between two people. Her voice is one of my favorite things about the books, and I love every time I fall back into it.

Last night, I had just finished reading a passage of Bird by Bird. It got me thinking about writing, and me writing. That's when I started thinking about writing this, and as I thought about the things I wanted to write about, I realized I was narrating it in my head the way Anne Lammont would. My story was being told in her voice. Really, I think our reflective styles are somewhat similar to begin with, but I was suddenly afraid I had no real voice. That I was too much of an open vessel. That I allowed other people's writing to influence me to the point where myself, my voice, no longer existed. Of course, it would be my story, so the actual happenings would be unique to me, but as to the method, the way the story was told, that would be up to whomever I had most recently read.

In a way, that's a bit of a good thing. It allows me to inflect those authors I admire. I can adopt some their styles and pump up my own writing. I can be more acute in my descriptions, attain a higher vocabulary, mimic the great authors. But I still want the writing to be mine. Not just the story, but the way it's told. I want to own the story, have the story be told the way I would tell it. With that comes the fear that as a highly empathetic person, I don't really have a way. I am continually taking in other people's emotions, methods, thoughts, and styles. This was my fear as I laid awake last night. Perhaps I was not unique. Perhaps, I did not have a voice of my own, and simply adopted other people's voices to suit my needs. Perhaps my stories were just rehashed versions of others I had read or hear.

But this morning, when I actually sat down to write, I realized I do have a voice. I am a unique person, with my own voice. In writing this, I am no longer thinking in Anne Lammont. Stephen King, in his forward for The Dark Tower series stated that he had had designs to write a fantasy series after reading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. But he waited to start it. He knew if he began it right away, he would have been telling Tolkein's story rather than his own. Tolkein was a huge influence, an inspiration. But King needed to find his own voice, tell his own story. To do so, he needed to wait. So he waiting and in so doing, came out with an incredible and unique fantasy all his own, told in his own voice. And I realized the same in true for me.

I need to allow authors to inspire me. To give me the desire to write, to tell my stories, to encourage me to capture scenes, notice detail, stimulate writing thoughts in my head. But I need to give myself time, more or less depending on how involved or influenced I was by what I read. Time to find my voice. Time so I can tell my story my way. In so doing, I will write for me, and find myself in my writing. I am unique.