The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: favorite author

  • Pants on Fire

    After reading a really good book, or watching a TV show or movie, I find myself adopting the speech patterns of a character that I identify with. Sometimes it sticks around for a few days, other times it sticks around for months or even years. If you’ve ever watched Deadwood you can probably guess what my favorite curse word was for a very long time.

    There are a conglomeration of authors I need to thank for who I am today as a writer. Embarrassing as it is, I must begin with the myriad of authors who wrote for Dragonlance, but in particular Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Thank you. I discovered a love of fantasy literature through your guiding hands. Without Dragonlance I may never have graduated past reading about girls and their horses. Without them, I may never have discovered the authors who would later directly influence my writing. (more…)

  • Combo One

    I seem to keep coming back – again and again – to this laundry list of authors: Robert A. Heinlein, Alan Moore, Ian Fleming, Neil Gaiman, Alan Lightman. These are the writers that have inspired my attempts at writing stories and influenced how I put one word after another as well as how I organize one idea against another.

    Back in the ancient days of the early to mid-90s, I first tried to write comics exactly like Gaiman and Moore and boy did I fail miserably. Once I got over trying to create the next Miracle Man or Sandman and settled in to telling stories that were occurring to me I did a lot better. I toyed with the idea of writing fiction, too, and that’s when I tried aping Heinlein.

    When I was a songwriter for the bands I played in, I would tap Heinlein again for song titles and themes. A couple songs were pretty successful though anyone listening to them and looking for a hidden meaning or if I was trying to adapt a book into a song would be disappointed. (And don’t bother trying to find any of my songs anywhere. I have copies and so do the guys I played with but this was way before the internet and music software were so ubiquitous.)

    As I started trying to write fiction on a dedicated word processor (anyone remember those?), I used thinly-disguised characters and settings from Heinlein and Gaiman, especially. I was trying to write fantasy and science fiction so it was natural to turn to masters of those genres. Later, after I discovered Einstein’s Dreams, Lightman taught me how to write emotions and so it was natural to pull from him, too. That led to me really dissecting Moore and Gaiman’s comic stories for emotional content. Goldmine. I was attending Fiction University.

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  • Listening to the sound of my voice

    PaperbacksWhen I first started writing, I never intentionally tried to mirror a favorite writer. The problem was that I hadn’t found my own voice yet. So when I started creating stories, it surprised me when I discovered the stories were not my own.

    One of my early attempts was to write a science fiction epic that would have a galactic scale to it. I stopped after a few thousand words when I realized I was retelling Issac Asimov’s Foundation series. As time went on, I discovered an interest in writing stories about a populated Mars, not unlike Ray Bradbury. When I graduated college, it was Stephen King and his epic The Stand that I was mimicking in style — if not in apocalyptic subject matter.

    Through all these phases in my writing, I was equally concerned and confounded by the advice I received to “find your own voice.”

    I don’t have a voice, I wanted to argue. I only know how to write like the books I have read.

    After a decade or so of writing, I’ve discovered my voice has been with me all along. It was my own voice I was drowning out by listening to my favorite authors whispering in my ear.

    What I didn’t understand, what many new writers fail to grasp, is that our favorite writers aren’t doing anything special in their writing. They aren’t adopting a “writer’s voice” when they put pen to page. Do you want to know their secret? Lean in close and I’ll whisper it to you: They talk to you.

    Writing can still be difficult. I get off track, I overwrite scenes, and I have a habit of putting on my editor hat when I should be writing. But when I get things right, it’s because I have stopped trying to write. Instead, I talk and let my fingers transcribe what I’m saying in my head.

    That’s the voice I needed to find, and it was inside me all along.

  • I, Apprentice

    “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” ~ Ernest Hemingway

    I’ve often read about writers, especially young writers, who write like the writers they are reading.  I don’t have that issue.  In fact, I wish I did.  How easy would it be if I could instantly write like a successful writer.

    However, I have learned some great things from some amazing writers.  From Bradbury and Gardner, I learned you don’t have to write poetry to write lyrically.  From Hemingway, I learned that the simplest sentence can be powerful.  From Faulkner and Twain, I learned you don’t have to stray far from home to find intriguing settings.  From Steinbeck and Joyce, I learned a fulfilling story isn’t about living happily ever after.

    We can learn so much from the supposed masters of our craft.  But, I believe you can learn something from any writer or any reader.  Look at the contributors to the Confabulator Café.  We all have our own styles, strengths, and weaknesses.

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