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Every writer here has had influences and many of my friends can probably cite mine as I theirs. But I got to thinking the other night, there have been "other" significant influences in my writing life that made me first aware that this craft we all love can be much more than a hobby but a way of life and even a profession.
So I posted this challenge on my writing social network: I'd be curious for you to express not your overt writing influences (Poe, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, et al), but the scribes or even situations that made this passion rear its creative head. Was it a Richie Rich comic book? Was it a TV show that spoke to you? Was it something a parent read to you?
Here's one of my own moments...
I remember it was around 1977 and I had a stack of these thin blue hardcovers with dynamic '60s era paintings on the covers. They were all written by this guy - his name was Franklin W. Dixon - and it amazed me he was so prolific.
In one book I would be in a secret tower and another I'd be escaping a creepy lighthouse or chasing down a ancient Chinese barge. Man, I wanted to do what he did and take youngsters like me to places they'd never dare dream. But how? What's more, he made me wish I had a brother.
Imagine my dismay, years later, when I found out it was a pen name. Didn't matter, though, by then I'd filled up enough composition books with my own tales of daring-do and read them aloud to the rest of fourth grade.
So I posted this challenge on my writing social network: I'd be curious for you to express not your overt writing influences (Poe, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, et al), but the scribes or even situations that made this passion rear its creative head. Was it a Richie Rich comic book? Was it a TV show that spoke to you? Was it something a parent read to you?
Here's one of my own moments...
I remember it was around 1977 and I had a stack of these thin blue hardcovers with dynamic '60s era paintings on the covers. They were all written by this guy - his name was Franklin W. Dixon - and it amazed me he was so prolific.
In one book I would be in a secret tower and another I'd be escaping a creepy lighthouse or chasing down a ancient Chinese barge. Man, I wanted to do what he did and take youngsters like me to places they'd never dare dream. But how? What's more, he made me wish I had a brother.
Imagine my dismay, years later, when I found out it was a pen name. Didn't matter, though, by then I'd filled up enough composition books with my own tales of daring-do and read them aloud to the rest of fourth grade.
