December 21

[in_the_blue]

scribble_myname asked me to talk about books that inspire/influence my writing. This is a great question!


- I strive to write as visually and with as much imagination as JK Rowling does in the Harry Potter books (but with fewer adverbs). She creates amazing worlds that are so rich in description. So did Tolkien in his Lord of the Rings series, but he also had maps, which I loved like crazy and devoured repeatedly in my teenage years.

- I like my characterization well done, but not overcooked. For that, I look to the books of Diana Wynne Jones, in particular the Howl Series, because everything in Ingary is just so. Her worlds are filled with minutiae, but not filled to overflowing.

- Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich was my inspiration when I first started out as a writer (why not think big, right?). She writes with so much heart, and that book is so rich that reading it is like swimming in chocolate frosting.

- As far as the craft of writing goes, Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast does it for me every time. For someone who worked so hard to pare every phrase down to its bare-bones essence, this book is remarkably descriptive. I have so much love for it.

- Despite my mixed feelings about the cruelty in his universe, the books in George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series taught me that it’s not only okay to have multiple POVs, but in a world as big as his it’s practically a requirement. When no one person could tell the whole story, why not let more than one person tell it?

- I’m not a huge fan of Veronica Roth’s writing style — it reads like role-play to me more often than not — but her Divergent trilogy made it clear to me that an author writing in first person really can get published! Unfortunately, her characters tend to sound alike, so when she uses multiple POVs it’s easy to get confused about who’s speaking, but still.

- I love, love, love good short stories, because they teach marvelous lessons about writing succinctly. Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories is one of my favorite collections. So are the short works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and O. Henry and James Joyce in Dubliners. I love O’Connor for her wryness and shocking honesty, Fitzgerald for his smart turns of phrase, O. Henry for his surprises, and Joyce for his long rambling sentences and tendency to have direct allusions to everything going on in Ireland with more than a small bit of symbolism thrown in there despite the lack of commas and the circuitous insights into what his characters are thinking and you know the sentences could go on and on for days but they are at least always filled with important revelations.

- For poetry, I'm always completely undone by Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats. Yeats is my first and forever favorite crazy poet. I'm awed by his craftsmanship and heart. The other book I need to mention here is The Captain's Verses: Love Poems by Pablo Neruda. Speaking of craftsmanship and heart! I read his work both in Spanish and English and it's unbelievably powerful, succinct, and beautiful. Special mention also goes to The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz for most of the same reasons. These people made me realize that while I can occasionally craft a nifty and effective turn of phrase, I am not and will never be a poet. I thank them for teaching me that lesson.

- There are books I'm supposed to have on this list, like Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird (started it, liked it but not enough to finish it) and Stephen King's On Writing (I've never read it). What can I say?

- I'm a fan of so many more authors, but these books are at the top of my personal iceberg.