Random

Thank You Note Challenge

So this time I was nominated by calliope95. The question, as I understand it, is which authors (both published traditionally and posted on Wattpad) have inspired your writing?

Boy, it's questions like this one that I always find basically impossible to answer! I've been reading ever since I learned how, reading everything I could get my hands on, and I've been writing since... well, I don't even know how far back to trace it! My original inspirations are definitely not the same as my current ones, and even beyond that it's not as simple as unraveling a sweater and tracing back individual strings. Some strands are longer, some are shorter, all are interwoven with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of others, and I can't even remember where they all came from.

I might compare it to a person who has a very large collection of objects around a common theme. Let's say that it's cows. This person has cow figurines, black and white spotted pillows and blankets, cow bells hanging around like windchimes... Everything is cows! Now this person could give a great tour of the house, pointing out each object and what they use it for whether it's a favorite, but try asking that person to name where every single object came from.

"Wow," the person might say, "I've had that painting of two cows standing in a field for so long I can't even remember where I got it!"

And that's what it feels like. Except that with writing, it's so much more complicated because you can almost think of it as a bunch of piles of different things. Let's say imagery is a pile of sugar and plot development is a mound of sand and over here is characterization and so on. Did every pinch of sugar come from a single author who taught me all I ever needed to know about imagery? No way! I took a pinch from here and a pinch from there and maybe a whole spoonful from that one author who was really good, but it all mixes together to look the same.

Wow, I wonder where I got my metaphors from. I sure am using a lot of them today, aren't I? You know, it probably has a lot to do with the Bible. Go parables! Or is it also a little bit of Aesop? Or maybe it comes from an author whose entire book was a metaphor for something else. Like Kafka's Metamorphasis? Or maybe it was one of those poets -- Robert Frost with his poems about albino spiders and roads that diverge in yellow woods.

Yeah, that's right, I'm messing with you. Because the answer is all of these and more! I'm like a sponge (to pile on yet another metaphor, which in this case is actually a simile). I read and read and read and absorb things without any conscious effort and without even realizing I'm absorbing them. And then I write something, stare down at the page, and say, "Woah! Where did that come from?" And have no idea.

So, calliope95, I defy you! Your question is unanswerable! Kidding, kidding. :) But probably the best answer I can give is "every author I have ever read", and that's too many to list. Anybody curious about Wattpad authors can go check out my reading list (everything on it is highly recommended!). And I have a list of about 500 different books I've read by traditionally published authors, but, to give you a "nice answer", I'll just list out a few authors who've written my favorite books (in no particular order).

- Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles)

- Madeleine L'Engle (The Time Quartet)

- Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead -- but not because I agree with the ideology)

- E. B. White (Everything! But Charlotte's Web especially)

- J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter, duh!)

- Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)

- Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre)

- Chaim Potok (I have yet to read a book by him that I don't like, but especially The Chosen)

- Anna Sewell (Black Beauty)

- Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events)

- Lois Lowry (The Giver)

- K. A. Applegate (Animorphs)

- Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day)

I've started feeling a little bad about challenging tons of people (and usually picking the same ones over and over, let's face it), so I'm ending an unconventional answer with an unconventional challenge. To anybody who's reading this: tell me in comments how many of these authors you've read before! I hope you can all get at least one since I've got books at a lot of different levels, and, come on, J. K. Rowling! If not, this is me feeling sad for you.  :(

Bonus challenge (if you want extra credit brownie points from me) - Pick one of these authors you haven't read and give them a try. Then you could, like, write about it in your own challenge book if you want to, I guess. What's in it for you? Well, if you do, you can turn around and challenge me right back to try one of your favorite authors! That's fair, right? Especially because nobody really NEEDS extra credit brownie points. I hope.

And you can thank calliope95 again for challenging me! I should probably follow him or something... Hm, why haven't I done that yet?