What Influences My Writing?

There are many things that influence my writing, but I thought I would use this post to describe a specific situation that has inspired a few ideas.

A friend invited me out for a drink so we could have a catch up. I accepted happily; I knew a place that not only did two-for-one cocktails, but also the best calamari.

So last night, I met Jay at her house and we made our way into Swindon. But instead of going to the calamari serving establishment, we ended up in the queue for one of those new ‘fashionable’ bars.

Even from the outside, I could hear the pulse of the dance music that I loathe. I immediately wanted to leave and go somewhere quieter. Jay insisted that we get a drink and stay.

We stayed for an hour, and in that hour, we barely spoke to each other. We couldn’t hear anything that the other said and it soon became too much effort to even try and have a conversation.

So instead of talking to my friend and discussing summer plans, as I had thought we would do, I ended up watching people and thinking about the stories I could create for them.

This disastrous night out has influenced the beginning of a short story and has even helped me with a scene I was considering using in a future assignment – so maybe it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

...And what I wanted.

What Jay wanted...

Should A Writer Be Invisible?

Lemony Snicket is an author who relies on invisibility. Daniel Handler constructed this author – basing the name loosely on Jiminy Cricket – even giving him false biographies in each of the books from ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’. However, he alludes to the character of Snicket within the stories. This is a technique he uses to make himself more appealing and mysterious to the children that read his books. But this invisibility is manufactured. It is not what Roland Barthes would describe as ‘death of the author’ – because the author is fictional. Handler, as well as writing characters for the stories, also builds an author for them. It is quite the opposite of the author’s death. It is his creation.

It is Snicket’s warning in ‘The Bad Beginning’ that alerted me to the fact that Snicket wasn’t real. How many authors actively discourage children from reading their books? ‘There is nothing to be found… in these books but misery and despair’ reads the blurb of this book. As an adult, I can realise that this is a clever technique, but can easily imagine a child being confused and therefore intrigued.

However, authors don’t have to make themselves invisible. Why should they have to? They should be as visible as they care to be. Handler made himself invisible in order to make Snicket appear more real to the reader, but this was his choice. An author is as much a part of the book as the characters themselves – (or in the case of Snicket, actually is a character.)

Is it necessary for a writer to write about the social/political issues of their time?

As readers – or more particularly – as students, we analyse writing and place our own interpretations upon it. Even if an author hasn’t purposefully included any relevant social or political issues in their writing, we still see it. We point out one character as a feminist, or an anarchist, or a communist, because they wear trousers, or smoke in a smoke-free zone, or have Russian ancestry. Perhaps the author had none of this in mind.

Emily Dickinson has been pigeon holed into a role in history. The role of the isolated, lonely woman that wrote poems about things she had never seen. She has been rammed firmly into this position by readers that take information about her time and find evidence of it in her poetry. When reading about Dickinson, a lot of the information is ‘supposed’. It is ‘supposed’ that she was influenced by Shakespeare and Emerson as it is ‘supposed’ that she wrote about the Civil War.

Writers don’t need to write about the social and political issues of their time in order for their writing to be good, or to be well liked or successful. But it seems to be necessary for us as readers for the writer to include these issues. It allows insight into their world, their time and their life. And we want that insight.

What makes Cheever's stories uniquely American and what makes a story uniquely British?

 Because I am British, I want to answer the second part of this question with things like: cream tea and scones, sarcasm, bull dogs and an intolerance of weather/other people/transport etc… But I shan’t.

For me, the inherently British story contains a one-of-a-kind imagination. Three of my favourite authors are – or were – British. (In no particular order) JK Rowling, William Shakespeare and Arthur Conan Doyle all wrote pieces that inspired and entertained millions with their unique and dazzling imaginings.

Shakespeare actually made up words. His imagination was so overpowering that there weren’t any existing words that he could use to express himself. JK Rowling gave us Platform 9 ¾ in our very own Kings Cross Station, as well as spells for any occasion. And Conan Doyle, well, he gave us Sherlock Holmes.

This isn’t to say that authors from elsewhere lack imagination. John Cheever doesn’t have any problems on this front, creating all sorts of different characters in different places with different jobs.  But he doesn’t quite have the imaginative ‘flair’ of the Brits. So what makes his stories uniquely American?

Am I justified to answer this question? I know so little about America, about its little quirks and traditions. The obvious things that stand out to me when reading Cheever are the settings, Minneapolis and New York; of course I know they are in America. The lack of interest in the letter ‘u’ – vigor, rigor, color; again, these are obviously American spellings.

Ask an American these same questions and they might answer in the reverse way. Listing all the Americanisms that I cannot see used in Cheever’s work, and say of British writers: “they sure do love the letter ‘u’”.