or The Reader Becomes the Writer
Welcome back to further ramblings associated with Inspiration. Without further ado...It happens in every writer's life. The moment when you put down a book and say, "Damn I would love to write something like that! Hey, why not try?"
Or, in an opposite direction, "I can do better than that. Hell, I will do better than that."
I think this is the most common for of inspiration. It is the drive that pushes a writer forward more than anything else. To see if they can duplicate, or, better still best, the power and majesty of what came before.
I can't tell you exactly the first book that inspired me in such a fashion. I know I was writing sub-par Choose Your Own Adventures and Fighting Fantasies. I made my own Godzilla Comic, my own horror comic, even an adaptation of the Last Dinosaur. I even wrote my own Doctor Who story. I've been doing this for a long time, longer, in fact, than ever realizing I wanted to be a writer.
Since starting this crazy journey, I've read plenty of things that made me long to be a writer. I once flipped through a paper vampire novel which convinced me that Anne Rice had done more harm than good, and the monster needed revitalizing again. (Of course, by that point I was and still am dead on the subject, but I really would like to try a vampire novel one day). I read several fantasy comedies that made me think about trying one myself. And so on.
My current Inspirations are, in general, Anime and three fantasy series: The Exploits of Ebenezum, Myth Adventures, and Discworld. Now I know I mentioned other inspirations in a much earlier post, but these don't contradict with those.
How, you might ask? Well, I'll go into that in the next installment as we wind things down and finally near the point of all of this.
5 comments:
Very interesting thoughts, here. But I have one question--if one is inspired to either "duplicate" or better another's work, is that really creativity? Or is it just an extension of another's ideas?
Sorry, that's two questions, isn't it? Ooo, three questions!
By "Duplicate" I mean, replicate the pleasures of the work, not the actual work itself, of course.
This is how I see it:
Stephen King was inspired to write Salem's Lot because of his love of Dracula. His novel has many of the same elements as Stoker's novel, and yet is its own creation.
Same holds true with Terry Brooks Sword of Shannara. It has a very heavy Lord of the Rings vibe to it (more so than in the King/Stoker comparison). And yet it covers ideas and concepts apart from Tolkien's original.
Finally, there's the Great Plagiarist, Shakespeare. The majority of his work is direct steals from that of other people's efforts. And yet he managed to take them and make nearly every one of them timeless classics.
My thought has been not to imitate exactly, but to use the source of inspiration as a starting place. From there, I believe you should move whatever your writing about away from the source until only a shadow of the source's presence remains or, preferably, there's no trace of where the idea came from.
I also think that the writer would always be better served using more than just one idea. Going back to King, his love of EC comics also influenced his writing of Salem's Lot. And, I'm sure, there were other elements as well.
All of this I intended to more or less cover in the last portion of the series. However, I really should have made it clearer as the series progressed. One of the failings of doing this things off the cuff rather than from an outline of some sort.
Oh well. It's a learning process, right?
Thanks for the excellent comment.
Having reread what you said, beckoningchasm, I'm not sure I answered the question(s) you asked. I'm recovering from a splitting headache and my focus isn't up to snuff.
Not that my foucus is ever better than "hazy at best"...
No, I thought your comment was excellent and pretty much answered my thoughts. I think that a really inspirational work isn't so much a jumping-off point as something added to a stew, which then becomes a jumping-off point (ie, there's more than a single work involved).
Shakespeare is such an odd case. I get the feeling he was like the sitcom writer of today, having to grind things out on a schedule. I imagine he would be stunned to see the regard in which he's held today.
He's the only person I can think of when someone asks that perennial question, "Who, past or present, would you like to have dinner with?"
Keep up the great work. Sorry about the headache! (Hope I'm not the cause...)
I think he would be, too. The way I understand things, Shakespeare had to struggle to keep body and soul together, sometimes through the use of lawsuits. Between that and running the risk of slighting the wrong person in power and getting himself killed, he didn't have a fun life.
(Thank you fort he kind words, by the by, and I don't you're the cause of my headache. Unless you know something that I don't... :) )
Post a Comment