Who inspired you to become a writer?

What happened to the story now? Did you weite it? Did your friend allow you to use his idea?

 

It's funny, cause we deviated so far from his original story, it just took us over, and became something else, to me anyway. His was in the macabre and mine ended up in the apocalyptic, but it was about survivng to be of the few left on the planet. He only wanted to write the original short tale. Mine went so far afield, I started over.
I'm about 150 pages in, trying to flesh out the middle of it.
Maybe I need another tent, and a terrifying campsite...

 

I wasn't inspired by a person. I was inspired by a thing. An old Remington (manual) typewriter that my dad had bought second-hand for my mom when she decided she wanted to go back to work (actually, we needed her to go back because my dad had been out of work; he hadn't wanted her to, and I strongly suspect that the typewriter was purchased as a peace offering; but I digress...). I was eleven years old and a newly minted latchkey kid, and I came home from school one day and saw the typewriter sitting there on the kitchen table. Calling to me. I started hunting and pecking right then and there.

 

I always daydreamed stories but I never ended up finishing them. I remember meeting someone at local game store that said they had written a fantasy novel. Also I got inspired from various video games, and a story idea popped into my head one day at work. To bad that story had to be taken out back with the old' twelve gauge. I'll finish my current project if it kills me.

 

At the beginning, I was not inspired as much as was forced to... well, by myself. See, back when The Sector was the concept of a post-apocalyptic series that tried to 'defy fairy tale tropes' (in the worst manner possible), not much of my previous attempts at telling the story worked. The comic turned out a disaster as I could only pose around 3D models, the visual novel got scrapped as soon as I saw the scripting language, and there was not much else I could do.

However, for the massive all-encompassing overhaul which turned my ideas to what they are now are to credit Elizabetta Gnone's Fairy Oak. A book that had a strange enchanting aura luring me to it which I didn't know was because of a memory fragment deep in my subconscious from when I was in primary school. Nevertheless, the book changed my entire perspective on fairy tales and made me realize that this is what I was meant to write: comfy, low-stakes, slice of life fantasy. A rather ironic twist if you ask me.

 

A high school counselor/teacher named Mr. Cooley.

He was my guidance counselor when I was a sophomore and I would meet with him regularly to talk about strategies I could employ to help with my ADHD. One time, when I was talking to him, he asked me to tell him about some of the things that would come to my mind. I did so, and he told me that a lot of the random thoughts I would have were pretty creative, and asked me if I'd ever considered creative writing. I hadn't, and he told me that he taught a class on it for juniors. I enrolled, and fell in love with the craft.

 

No one in particular. I've been writing ever since I knew how to write, although it only came to the forefront much later. Started off mostly loving drawing and art, and writing on the side. Then they came side by side. Then in my adulthood I made the choice to develop writing over art - it wasn't exactly a conscious decision. It was more a case of I hadn't done either art or writing in a couple of years, but I've always wanted to publish my own book, whereas I had no such goal for art. So when I decided to work on a story that I intend on publishing, that was when I took writing "seriously", as it were. Since I had already stopped drawing for a few years (kinda on and off, much like writing), it wasn't like I chose to "abandon" art. Rather more it sorta petered out.

Now I do art on the side, origami and polymer clay pieces a few times a year, with writing being my main goal/skill. I've thought about doing art as a career many times - either selling my polymer clay jewellery or going into animation, but animation is too solitary and I don't wanna move to Hollywood (or Japan, and I don't speak Japanese), and selling jewellery requires me to make pieces en-mass and I'd get bored doing that, on top of I'm not really into business.

But publishing a book - somehow it feels more achievable. It also holds my interest a lot more. So I guess it was the natural choice.

If there was anyone, it would have to be my learning support teacher. When I first moved to England, she was the one who helped me with my English. She introduced me to poetry and rhymes. She pushed me into small groups to explore creative writing. She gifted me with a children's book of verse when I left the school, filled with beautiful poems accompanied by gorgeous watercolour illustrations, because she knew I loved art and language. She nurtured that passion first.

And my mum got me writing. I knew I wanted to write but I was afraid - I didn't speak English well back then and made a tonne of mistakes. She said, "Who cares? It's just for your own enjoyment." I listened to her and started writing in English. The first typed English story was about a guy finding an ancient man in a cave haha. My second was about a homeless teenager. And my longest was an idea I stole from The Borrowers, a hand-written and illustrated story that lasted 97 pages Wrote that when I was 9 or 10. I wrote plays because I read plays from the school library. I wrote manga because I also read manga, but those I wrote in Chinese. First they were Doraemon fanfiction - I didn't know what fan fiction was but I took the characters and just made my own stories. Then I had a bedtime book of fairy stories, and I started writing about the fairies of the season. I wrote poems too, even some gibberish ones that only existed to rhyme.

So I'm guessing: books. Books inspired me. They gave me ideas and my natural inclination was to write, whether it was rewrite what has been written or writing my own. I didn't care. I just loved to write.

 

Um, so my inspiration my seem a little strange...

As a child I had a terrible illness. From the age of five I suffered from very painful migraines and epilepsy. I spent my childhood in and out of various hospitals. Specialists, medications, tests upon tests didn't solve anything. I started seeing a councilor when I was very young. I developed a troubling anger problem. I didn't feel like I had any control, over anything really. I lived in a flux of angry confusion.

One of my therapists suggested writing as an outlet. It helped. I started off writing in a journal and it developed into fiction stories. I remember handing in a creative writing project titled, “The Aliens Stole my Homework.” My teacher loved it. I shared it with my therapist and she encouraged me to continue to write.

I guess it stuck because in between the confusion and the anger and the pain I found something I could control and latch onto. I still have the toy she gave me. It's wrapped in layers of plastic because it's so old it leaks. It's one of those etch sketch things... It's a plastic red sqaure filled with grey powder. There are two knobs on the bottom of it. You turn each one to draw pictures in the grey powder and when you want to start over you shake it vigorously.

 

Ah, the classic Etch-A-Sketch. Who hasn't had one of these at some time or other?

As for your inspiration, I can relate to that. I'd done some writing before 1975, but none of it was very good. Then I went through a period where several things happened that drove me to a nervous breakdown, and I started a journal as therapy. I think it was that journal that really broke the wall between where I was and where I felt I needed to be. I still have that journal, and find myself startled at times at how bare I laid myself.

 

I inspire myself. Seriously, I don't need anyone else. Just as serious, there are many authors, novel and short story authors, I like. But that doesn't mean I get inspired by them.

 

Old journals? Yeah, I still have a few of mine from when I was a child. They're mostly incoherent ramblings. However, I changed over to type in my late teens. I still have that journal. It's fairly large. I've always found journaling helpful. I may not keep a journal consistantly but I will write an entry every now and then. I'm pretty sure there are more than a handful scattered through out my files. I don't find myself shocked at the my entries I more commonly find them embaressing heh.

 

Me, my mother got me this weird honeycomb screen with a magnetic pen instead. I played with one at a friend's. I wasn't great at drawing until secondary school, but that made a masterpiece look awful.

 

This is an easy one for me.

Stephen King, i loved his style so much, he made me want to write.


Rgds

 

Genuinely The Bible. It was one of the earliest prose I read, and I liked the idea of a story 'being imbued with the moral law' (I doubt I considered them morals at the time). I think I wrote little short ideas rather than stories, and I would read them to (maybe at) my parents as they went about their business. Then the biggest influence towards actual 'stories' was probably reading Alice in Wonderland, and being part of an online 'roleplaying group' where writing was the decider of survival (Imagine Battle Royale, but each character writes their own story, and the better the story/character, the more likely you are to survive an encounter). Competitive writing was probably the biggest influence that led to the way I write now, and a fella named Tim Fitzgerald from somewhere in Texas was like an online Socrates to me. I only mention him because he passed away a few years back at 35, and I probably owe a lot to him for the time he took out of his life to critique my work and to help me develop. Christ, I used to type in AOL speak around that time as well (facepalm).

 

Honestly, my inspiration is daydreaming and a big ego (plus some family support after finally mustering up the cojones to pitch some of my ideas).

Basically, I see so many stories get published with gaping plot holes, ridiculous contrivances, and/or drama purely for the sake of drama (such as pointlessly killing off a character at the end, often in completely avoidable or occasionally completely unrelated-to-the-plot ways) and it just ticks me off.

I know I'm far from being the most eloquent writer; but when I see things like the above being fed to the public, it makes me feel like I can at least do better than that.