Have you always wanted to be a writer?
I’ve always been a writer. In fact, I started writing before I knew how to read. It’s a story I’ve told elsewhere, but here’s a longer version:
My family lived in Northwest Ohio — one of the hardest-hit areas — during the Great Blizzard of ’78. We were fine, but ended up housebound for over ten days. At the time, I was just shy of three years old, which meant that when my mother (understandably) refused to let me go outside and play, I stood at the door and cried for hours.
I hate winter weather to this day. The Midwest is welcome to keep it, thank you; I’ll take my heat and hurricanes instead.
At one point, mostly to keep me from climbing the storm door again, my mother asked me to start telling her a story about what I’d do if I were outside. I came up with something pretty coherent for a toddler. She wrote it down in a notebook and then drew some pictures to go with it. Eventually, we ended up on the couch where I told her the rest of the story while she wrote it and drew it.
That’s what I mean when I say I started writing at a very young age. As I look through the rest of my life — school, work, relationships — I can see that the writer in me was similarly always there, even if I didn’t recognize it at the time. So, in my case, it wasn’t “have I always wanted to be a writer?” The more relevant question is, “how did I realize that I was a writer at my core?”
That’s worth a whole set of posts on its own. The point of this answer, though, is that being a writer wasn’t something I “wanted to be when I grew up.” It was just something that was always there.
Who are the writers who most influenced you?
In my last question post, I stated that it’s not possible for a writer to be too well-read. I’m very much an embodiment of that statement: I read. A lot. From all sorts of sources, and in all sorts of genres. In fact, studying and imitating what I read is how I started learning to write well, versus simply telling stories out loud.
The list of writers I cite as influences is short, but telling, particularly when evaluating my work as a whole:
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Orson Scott Card: His novelization of The Abyss was actually the first book of his that I read. It was followed, not too much later, with a gift of Ender’s Game. Not long after that I found a copy of Treason in my school library. The three books are dramatically different in terms of style and methodology, and I was curious how they could share an author. Comparing those books was one of the earliest projects I did about craft. Later, when I obtained a copy of his How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, I was able to relate his advice — which included commentary about how he’d evolved as a writer — to various aspects of his work.
I’ve since read a lot more of Card’s work. While I’ve been fairly critical of some of the more recent titles in the Enderverse, I still find a lot of it compelling and instructive. I should also add that while I’m aware he’s a controversial figure, I have chosen not to engage in that debate.
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A.C. Crispin: One of the highlights of my life was being able to meet the “Queen of Tie-Ins” at what turned out to be her final Dragon Con appearance. Her notes in the third edition of Yesterday’s Son were some of the first writing advice I ever read and understood completely. As it happens, I ran across those notes shortly before the first edition of StarBridge was published. I fell in love with the book — and the series — immediately.
I’ve since become a little more clear-eyed (and, unfortunately, a tad disenchanted), but not enough to stop reading it. The reason why? Instead of addressing thematic material implicitly, over time, StarBridge became more overt and in-your-face about its “message.” To me, that detracted from the books, and it’s one reason that I strive not to be so overt about theme and opinion. The storytelling should always come before the message.
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Susan Grant: Susan Grant is, like me, a bit of an outsider writer. And, like me, she pulls aspects of her non-writing life into her writing work. As it happens, the intersection of military science fiction and category romance is a place where I adore being, and I have thoroughly enjoyed her tendencies to match practical, career-minded, worldly women with otherworldly men. Further, while she writes “category romance” — a genre that’s often derided in literary circles — her writing is just plain good. It’s readable and accessible, which are two things I myself very much desire to be as a writer.
Grant’s tangles with traditional publishing, and her ultimate decision to go “indie,” have also been a significant inspiration. They’re the reason I’m willing to both look at traditional publishing and at self-publishing. Her blog posts about her adventures as a pilot — and now, as a retired pilot — also make for delightful reading.
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Nora Roberts: I first became aware of Nora Roberts through craft articles she’d written for Writer’s Digest. In those, she has a strong voice and real, down-to-earth, practical advice for writing. It was only later that I realized I’d been reading her work all along, as my mother was a fan. Reading those books, and eventually also reading books written by J.D. Robb (another of her pen names), was not only a pleasant experience but also helped me find, and evaluate, examples of the craft practices she advocates.
Roberts’ work is often criticized as non-literary pulp, but reading her work has helped me realize that there’s a certain amount of pretentiousness in parts of the literary community. It also helped me realize that, while I enjoy “high literature,” I’m not restricted to it — and that that’s okay. Being a non-literary “outsider” writer without a four-year degree and no work experience in the publishing-adjacent industry does not make me any less of a good writer. In fact, it actually makes me a better writer, and I can look to her as a role model in these areas.
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Kathy Tyers: I first encountered Kathy Tyers via the Bantam Spectra paperback edition of Firebird, which I read so many times that the cover fell off. When she later heavily rewrote Firebird with Christian themes, I was initially extremely disappointed — at the time, I was angry at God for personal reasons, and I’d also discovered that most “Christian fiction” was thinly disguised exhortation. It wasn’t until several years later, once the entire initial trilogy came out, that I tried again — and realized that the things I’d loved about the “secular” edition were still very much there. (I’d also been reconciled to the Church in the meantime.)
By following her career over nearly forty years, I’ve been able to see Tyers’ evolution as an author and that has enormously informed my own understanding of both craft and the writing life. My copies of the annotated trilogy are as much a resource about writing as they are about the story itself. I’ve also been fortunate enough to chat with her online in several forums (I was even, briefly, a moderator of her mailing list) about writing, Christian life, and other topics.