Who inspired you to become a writer?

Discussion in 'Discussion of Published Works' started by Daemon Wolf, Jul 27, 2015.

  1. florajohn225

    florajohn225 New Member

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    Very much agreed, I personally like to find a book I absolutely love, and study it. For me at least, it's to rewrite the book by hand. Like copy it onto paper with pen. This takes a long time but you notice tiny intricacies that you'd never have found before.
     
  2. Mason C.

    Mason C. New Member

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    William S. Burroughs was the guy who got me back into writing. I never thought I could be a writer because I thought it was some highfalutin art form for only the smartest and most posh of people. While Burroughs had a wealthy background and attended Harvard, the fact that he worked as an exterminator, became a down-and-out junkie, killed his wife in a freak accident, and still was able to write some really incredible books made me realize that writing was this adventure that can go in any direction. While I never want to get hooked on heroin or kill a significant other in any way, I felt compelled to try writing stories again after reading about the long and strange life Burroughs lived, as well as his involvement with the Beats and friendships with the likes of Ginsberg and Kerouac. As a kid, I never thought much of writing and didn't appreciate the fact that I could write in any creative way. Once I found Burroughs, I was determined to break through the surface of this ability to write and see where it could take me. And I'm glad to say, it's taken down a path I haven't regretted since.

    Before anyone asks, I haven't killed anyone nor I have gotten hooked on any drugs since I began my journey.
     
  3. Millamber

    Millamber Senior Member

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    Ermmm... Well I've always loved reading, from a young age, and even when I'm walking to/from work, i'll have two books in my bag. The whole 'escaping' away when reading made me think "I wonder if I can do this", and so I started to write to see how it went.

    Now that I am both reading and writing, I look to who I like to read as inspiration, such as Raymond Feist, Philip Pullman, etc. I try to avoid comparisons to authors who write complex and plots that leave me in awe. The level of detail that went into Potter, whilst not everyone's cup of tea, still leaves me in awe at the detail she has, and I try not to let it put me off ha.
     
  4. D.Clarke

    D.Clarke Active Member

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    As far as inspiration? Hm I would say I like the writing styles of H.G Wells in The Invisible Man, and Oscar Wilde's A Picture Of Dorian Gray. The writing is just.. beauty. I'd like to model my style around those two books, but more in a simplified form. I also study Ancient greek orations so a lot my writing is influenced from that style of writing.

    One orator and another logographer that I particularly am influenced by is Demosthenes and Isocrates. I'll read their speeches and letters over and over. Copy them over and over. You could say 75% of my writing style is influenced by those two figures.
     
  5. Alex R. Encomienda

    Alex R. Encomienda Contributor Contributor

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    When I was a child of six or seven, my mother used to buy me toys but instead I wanted books. I read Buck Buck the chicken, Ethan and the sun, moon and stars, Pigsty and I love you forever along with others.

    I suppose I have always been an imaginative person. I don't fit well in mundane life. I'm shy, quiet, sensitive, scared, thoughtful and actually too nice for my own good.

    There's nothing like opening up a can of Canada Dry and writing in my bedroom with some string cheese at my side.
     
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  6. NortheastEye582

    NortheastEye582 New Member

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    Back when I was in seventh grade, my English teacher held a writing contest for the month of October: we all had to write short scary stories and read them in front of the class, and the top three would win a prize. The story I wrote came from a writing contest on the back of an R.L. Stine book that had ended ten years previously, and I was the only one in the class who typed and printed mine.

    I ended up tying in third place with a different student, and the prize was a small bag of candy for each winner. After that, I just didn't stop writing.
     
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  7. KevinMcCormack

    KevinMcCormack Senior Member

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    A friend of mine. He lost his job and thought he'd take a stab at blogging. His wife was supportive (nurse's salary covered their expenses) and over about three years, he expanded into offering books, and has been able to develop a reliable income.

    His wife's family has property on a nearby island, so he posts pictures of himself sitting on the beach typing on a laptop ("My office this mornnig!"). He's doing it differently than I would, which gives him more stress and weekly work hours than I think is justifiable (he's self publishing, managing his own webserver, marketing via social media, &c) but still looks in better mental and physical health than before he started.

    About five years ago, I thought: Heck, if he can do it, I can do it.
     
  8. Laurus

    Laurus Disappointed Idealist Contributor

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    My lady partner. I used to write all the time as a kid and early teen, but stopped for about a decade. Almost two years ago now, she helped me rediscover my voice and passion.
     
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  9. Vrisnem

    Vrisnem Member

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    No one really. I began writing at age nine because I'd get impatient waiting for sequels to video games to come out so instead I began writing my own. It was at that time I remember telling my mother that I wanted to be a published author.
     
  10. birdspoon

    birdspoon Member

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    I was inspired by history. That sounds kind of weird, but I was a history undergrad and then a history graduate student for many years. So I saw myself writing a lot of non-fiction and I thought I should give fiction writing a whirl and low and behold, I enjoyed it very much. I was inspired by own education because I was writing about all these people who lived these incredible lives that I may not ever really get to live. But maybe my characters can live them on paper and in peoples imaginations.
     
  11. KiiingIzzy

    KiiingIzzy Member

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    I used to write dumb little short stories as a kid. I moved onto roleplaying in my teen years, and one of my friends got me into Anita Blake because the stuff we roleplayed was similar in theme (before the sex stuff). Hamilton really inspired me to put together a full book, though I think I've moved away from Urban Fantasy a lot since then.
     
  12. Marius Av

    Marius Av Member

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    Well, you see, nobody inspired me. I didn't read so much in my childhood - the books they gave to me were the worst, written only by people from my country, so I got the idea that reading would never help me. When I became a teenager, I kept the same thoughts, but I saw some friends writing for a little competition, so I decided to join them. At that time, I knew I was very good at my own language (especially grammar), but I didn't expect to write so good. After that, I began to do it very frequently, improving myself without any help. That is, until a year ago, when another writer told me to look for advices, too. "Doing everything alone is not gonna work forever, I guess", she said.
     
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  13. OnesieWrites

    OnesieWrites Member

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    Hurricane Gold by Charlie Higson, The Northern Lights series by Philip Pullman and A Game of Thrones by G.R.R.M were books i couldn't put down and literally took me away to another world.

    That's when i truly realised how immersive books could be and it fuelled my need to tell my own stories.
     
  14. JLT

    JLT Contributor Contributor

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    There are two categories of people who have inspired me:

    1. Exemplars: people whose styles I've been influenced by. Kurt Vonnegut, E. B. White, Robert Claiborne, John Muir (the VW guy), and a bunch of others, most of who wouldn't recognize each other.

    2. Encouragers: Ethel Skinner, Joan Costello, and Betty Nicholas, who were elementary and high school teachers; my father, who always saw promise in what I wrote; and fans who have read my books and complimented me on them.

    I don't see one category as being more important than the other. I needed them both.
     
  15. GB reader

    GB reader Contributor Contributor

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    I am 63 years old. I have been trying to write for 4 months. I always loved reading, I have read too many books.

    I really don't want to be an author, I want to learn how to write, how to tell a story the best way possible.

    I think language is extreamly important, we are social creatures, we need to communicate and language is the viecle for communication.

    So you can say that all of those thousands of authors that I have read inspired me.

    It's time that I do my duty, that I don't just sit there and consume all marvelous literture. It's time to pay.

    (I have great fun learning how to do it.)
     
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  16. Jawbonejim

    Jawbonejim New Member

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    Bukowski and Harry Crews. I spent most of my life thinking writing was an art reserved for a certain class of person. I now know that to be false, thanks to these two guys. They opened the world of writing up like no one else, in my opinion.
     
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  17. Sclavus

    Sclavus Active Member

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    I started writing stories on my own as a young boy, but it was my 11th grade composition teacher who made me think I was actually good at it. She inspired me to pursue storytelling as something worthwhile. My writing is also often inspired and influenced by Jim Butcher, Jonathan Maberry, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, and Ray Bradbury.
     
  18. NateSean

    NateSean Senior Member

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    I would talk anyone's ear off at length about my fantasies and ideas.

    My mother kept insisting that I need to write them down. Later my siblings, a science teacher in high school, a few of the counselors in Upward Bound, all successively saw bits and pieces of my writing and encouraged me to keep pursuing it as my craft.
     
  19. Jonas Spångberg

    Jonas Spångberg New Member

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    Myself. I need somewhere to pour all the results of my daydreaming.
     
  20. Moon

    Moon Contributor Contributor

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    I dunno. Its just something I'm good at, so says every English teacher I've had. Got pushed into it after my first creative writing project got an A+ and won the schools "Write-a-thon" contest. Suppose that 6th grade teacher, a woman with a name I cannot remember, is to blame. Evil woman, making me type out my long day dreams and focus on them with detail.
     
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  21. 33percent

    33percent Active Member

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    I got bored in college, passed out at the computer in the library and woke up started writing a small story that turned into a novel that I still continue to write on it 6 years later.
     
  22. ghostkisses

    ghostkisses Member

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    I'm not a "writer", per se. I mean, I write, sure, but I don't know if I'd ever get anything published (much to the dismay of my family.) I generally like to keep things I enjoy to myself, with exception of close friends and a few people online if I feel like it, and I have to babble about stuff I enjoy bc otherwise I feel like I'd burst if no one knew about them. No one really inspired me, either, I have just been writing as long as I remember.

    When I was in nursery, the teacher said she was concerned about my learning rate and thought my English wasn't progressing further enough. Fast forward 2 years or so and I'm top in the class for English. I didn't write out of spite to her though lol, I don't know I just liked stories and I'd read them everyday, I'd come out of the library with great stacks of books and finish them in a few days, make little booklets full of stories about unicorns and kittens and stuff that then evolved into spy stories and vampire stories, and then horror stories, fantasy stories, etc, and when I was little I used to make puppet shows out of my stories and act out my stories.. I just really like stories.
     
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  23. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    :) In my opinion, that last sentence you wrote is the BEST of all BEST inspirations for writing. You just really like stories.

    So do lots of other people, so you'll be working on something that has enthralled people for aeons, if you become a storyteller. Of course most of today's storytellers do it with either printed or filmed media, but you're hearkening back to the days where a bard, or storyteller, using voice and perhaps an instrument to accompany themselves, held the favour of everybody in the great halls of the world. I don't think you can pick a better inspiration than loving stories—loving reading them, thinking about them, creating your own and putting them into a format which other people can enjoy. It sounds as if you've already evolved many of the usual kinds of stories into your own versions. Excellent.

    It's certainly what inspired me to write. I love stories, and read constantly, for pleasure, as long as I can remember. I know I already knew how to read when I started school, and used to skip to the back of the reading books on the first day, to read the 'better' stories. I also made them up for myself and for my kid sister, which I would verbally tell her upon request. I have always had a story in my head. It was a lot of fun realising I could actually WRITE one as well—but that didn't happen until I was nearly 50 years old and got a word processor.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2017
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  24. GlitterRain7

    GlitterRain7 Galaxy Girl Contributor

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    This might sound weird, but I believe that I can thank the characters in my WIP for me becoming a writer. I’ve been making characters with stories my whole life, and I have a bunch more then the ones in my WIP. These characters weren’t in writing, though, just stories in my head. The characters in my WIP are much newer then most of my other ones (circa 2014) (most of them are circa 2008, when I was 8) and it just so happened that I was old enough to be like “hey I should try to write a book about them because they’re really interesting.” Needless to say, here I am with their manuscript I’m revising, and now I want to write more stories.
     
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  25. alanzie

    alanzie Member

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    In order. . .King, (God bless Carrie and Salem's Lot), Poe (had Tell Tale Heart memorized when I was 8), Bradbury (Illustrated Man. . .YES!), McCammon (Boy's Life and Stinger are masterpieces), Straub (Ghost Story, of course) and Simmons (Summer of Night). Obviously, there is a horror bent to my list of literary idols. I don't see how I could write in any other genre.
     

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