Who are your influences as a writer?
On the way back from World Fantasy, one of the books I polished off was Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. We’re doing a bunch of old books next year for our book group, and it’s giving me a chance to read some books that I read as a kid, remember fondly, but really remember very little about. The Martian Chronicles was one of those books.
It goes without saying that Bradbury is almost poetic in the execution of his prose. The stories take your breath away. His precision of description creates scenes in the theater of your mind.
I realized that a lot of how I write comes from reading Bradbury. This is not praise of incredible writing skill. I realized that I emulate Bradbury subconsciously, that I’ve forgotten his work, and suddenly I can see where my work is trying to be like his.
There are other writers that I’ve discovered this about from time to time. At Viable Paradise, Doyle suggested that Substance of Shadows had overtones of E. Nesbit. Guess who read E. Nesbit growing up?
Who else will I see in there, now that I’ve gone back to look? Frances Hodgson Burnett? Mary Stewart? Charles Dickens?
Even as we begin to write, we don’t remember who or what we’ve read, but it appears that your subconscious remembers what you like, and what makes you feel at home.
I am well aware of how much I adore certain writers that I’ve loved as an adult. I wonder how much the writers we adored as children make a difference.
Now I’m convinced, after the startling discover of trying to be Bradbury, that they make all the difference.
I’m very curious about where your influences come from, and what you think.
Catherine
I have a lot of disparate influences that I take elements from. Lately I am drawn back to Joe Haldeman because he can write somber stories about war, academia and other potentially dry subjects and manage a light touch. Serious without taking the story too seriously, somehow, which is a bit rare. Though I could never write like her, I love Ursula LeGuin’s total confidence as a writer, and in the reader. (“Skip to page X to continue this narrative, or read on for interesting tangents. Doesn’t matter to me.”) Those are the writers from my youth that I am revisiting now.
In highschool and college, I was all about Robert A. Heinlein,
Douglas Adams, Robert Anton Wilson, and Kurt Vonnegut. Now I’m more into Pratchett, Eoin Colfer, and Robert Rankin.
Wow, I’m suddenly beginning to understand why I write the way I do. Frightening.
Bradbury is also a big one for me. I’ve been told some of my short stories are very reminiscent of his “Greentown, IL” stories (although that may be mostly because I write about small towns a lot). Certainly Adams, Vonnegut and Bisson work in there depending on what I’m writing (hopefully when I get back to the other novel those voices will come through stronger). Then there are the contemporaries, Scalzi, Buckell, etc. Merrie Haskell does a lot of things I admire with fairy tales (hopefully her current novel will sell). And Gaiman, although he’s more of a “why, yes, you can write about this” guru than someone I’m styling after (although he also has a very open style).
With the current WIP, it’s the spirit of Dashiell Hammet, Robert Parker, Raymond Chandler and the early 30-50’s WB script writers. As I write this novel I continue to read them and be inspired. Really, those old guys are if not the masters, the supreme court jesters of the simile. I hope some of that comes out in this manuscript.