Joined: 29 Mar 2005
Posts: 3381
Location: Inner Sanctum
Who has inspired your writing?
I've always written poetry or stories since I could pick up a pencil but there are people that have defined or given direction to my writing.
There are several people that strike me as significant influences on the path I've taken. The first influence off the bat with me is Shakespeare! Why? Not the obvious reasons of brilliance. I stuttered as a child which caused me alot of grief as some of you may understand. It probably caused my introversion to be stronger than it should have been.
Anyways, I started reading Shakespeare out loud to myself as a way to master what I felt was crippling me. As my mother would say my brain works faster than my vocal abilities. By doing this I mastered speech and was rid of my dreaded stutter.
Poets are always my inspiration! Patti Smith's book 'Babel' is my Bible! She is to me a defining influence on my writing. Her words spoke to me when nothing else made sense. She turned her words into music that spoke to me on another level. To date she is #1 on my list of artists.
Another influence was the French poet Rimbaud whose work changed and broke all the rules. He was a rebel in his time!
Yes, there is a pattern here! lol The rebels who define and change art are always my heroes. I've always been a rebel. I define myself by living outside of the box.
I am curious and would love to hear other people's influences. It gives others insight into their writing.
My first gf...ex now...but we at one point started writing paragraphs back and forth over some silly topic. (Find it under love stories...Dirty Clinic). But I decided to get into it more. I think I'd done a little bit of writing before her but not a whole lot. I need to get back into it. *looks at all the unfinished stories of mine posted on mels* _________________ "it ISNT porn its EROTICA there IS a difference" --Wolfie
My first influence in writing was my grandmother (fathers mum)…a brilliant woman. She would write little poems for me and her other grandchildren…and everyone else I think. It was something she enjoyed doing. When I was about six or seven years old I wrote one for her and she loved it…or loved that I had done it for her.
In fact all of my grandparents and my parents were also a great influence on me because they inspired in me an innate curiosity about almost everything. They supported that curiosity by feeding it. It did not matter whether the interest was music, art, literature, astronomy, philosophy, history or anything else…they supported it and fed that interest but they never force fed me. I think that is what kept my interests alive and let my curiosity thrive to this day.
Aside from family those who have influenced my love of poetry and in fact the entire span of my wide ranging interests are in all actuality innumerable. They range from ancient historians and thinkers to modern day authors and scientists.
In my poetry my greatest inspiration is easy to see…it is Debra and our little girl both of whom I love more than life itself. After going back and looking at many of the things I have written I can honestly and easily say that the next great inspiration (after the two loves of my life) would be life itself and my many interests which find there way into my writing as well…from my love of history, philosophy and mythology to astronomy, science and nature they can all be seen in what I write and how I write.
Eiregirl _________________ All poems and stories posted by Eiregirl are
Copyright 2005 - 2008 Aoibhegréine
These literary works are my property under copyright. If you wish to use my work for any purpose please ASK FIRST.
Sun Sep 24, 2006 9:03 pm
Sadie Sin
Joined: 17 Feb 2006
Posts: 42
Location: New Orleans
Edgar Allan Poe is one of mine and Poppy Z Brite. _________________
Sun Sep 24, 2006 9:14 pm
desert-fish
Joined: 13 Apr 2006
Posts: 2777
Location: deleted
necessity is the mother of invention...
heartbreak was my greatest teacher...
write it dont fight it...it was an exercise in psychotherapy for this some-one who couldn't afford a psychotherapist! i hardly read published poets
I need to communicate
to placate this burning in my chest
for fear I should suffocate
from a lack of self-expression
So I challenge my oppression:
this piece of paper is all mine:
every word that I write
every line and its rhyme
is like a deep breathe
that delays my own death
Joined: 04 Mar 2005
Posts: 5094
Location: Scotland
I first found I could write when I entered a BBC competition to complete a short story started by Joanna Harris...
...when I got here, it was reading Linda Bray's poetry that inspired me to write. I will not tell you who or what I first wrote poems about.
HappierBlue intoduced me to the sonnet.
Since then I read very little, in the hope that my writing will not become derivative.
Mb
xx
_________________ all posted material (c) Marie Marshall, unless otherwise stated.
Sat Oct 07, 2006 4:53 pm
melons Site Admin
Joined: 06 Feb 2004
Posts: 2371
Shakespeare influenced me along with the usual greats like Wordsworth, Keats etc. In fact there are far too many for me to mention.
I entered a poetry contest when I was only 9....the contest was for 14 to 18 year olds. I won the contest then had to surrender the prize because I defaulted by being underage......that kind of jaded me from an early age *chuckling....I never stopped writing though.
My best writing (in my opinion) flows now because I'm so happy in love and being loved...so it comes from my heart and Cat is the reason. I have never written from my heart before because no one has ever won my heart until now....and she has me hook, line and sinker *smiling.
Mel
Sun Oct 08, 2006 12:47 am
Achilles
Joined: 13 May 2006
Posts: 39
Location: from UK via Australia, now in Japan
writing i like, maybe influenced by
Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, Terry Pratchett, Linda Christmas (wrote the best factual account of life in the here and now in 20th century Australia), Alan Moore for Swamp Thing, and Watchmen which really made me think.
And Ian Fleming's Bond, which i started reading when i was six. And Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, for The Young Ones and the Blackadder series.
I never took to the Sherlock Holmes stories until is was in my mid-20's, but they are gripping stories, although the reality of Holmes is that he was always in character as either The Great Detective, or in disguise. He never did the equivalent of jogging down to the store in his tracksuit for a carton of milk.
Watson is the realist, who knows that trouble can hide behind any rock or tree, and he isn't the buffoon as portrayed in early Hollywood movies.
Pratchett, Elton, and Curtis have all written about contemporary Britain in the form of metaphor, or analogy.
Pratchett is the only author that can make me burst out laughing.
Susan StoHelit is my favorite character, closely followed by Gaspode the Wonder Dog. _________________ A disk of herbed pastry (Rosemary, Thyme), risen up to make a cup. Then stew up some lamb cutlets with garlic, honey, lemon, eggplant and tomato.
Throw it in. Just throw it in to that cup. How good is that?
Sun Oct 08, 2006 1:19 am
BdeCaunteton
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
Posts: 955
Location: Iowa City, IA
Hmm, I know a lot of my writing comes from the books I read as a kid or at least underneath all the layer there's a bit of my reading roots, so lemme scrape my brain here:
Louisa May Alcott
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Anne M. Martin
All the American Girl authors (primarily Susan S. Adler)
I'm sure there's more but I can't remember a whole lot of them. I really do think these poetry books I used to read a lot in 4th/5th grade, it was a big thick book, it was a series of nature poems and the elements and the animals were actual characters. I seriously cannot remember a whole lot about them.
Today, a lot of my poetry and prose originates from works of Virginia Woolf, The Bronte Sisters, Marion Zimmer Bradley, anything written during the age of the gothic 18th century novel.
Wow, I've never thought of all this before... thanks for the brain twist!! _________________ “It would be a pity of lesbians and gay men retreated into the same kind of cultural separatism. " - Jeanette Winterson
www[dot]bdecauntetonspoetry[dot]webs[dot]com
Sun Mar 11, 2007 11:03 pm
bbmaniac
Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 248
Location: Houston, TX
Shakespeare is also an influence of mine, as well as Jane Austen. Austen is, in my humble opinion, the queen of sarcasm, lol. Honestly, though...I tend to be inspired by the most surprising things sometimes. There are the obvious inspirations...friends, girlfriends, music, situations and the like. Sometimes, though, a glimpse of something...be it physical and right in front of your face, or one of those fleeting, 'visual thoughts' that run through my head...can inspire me to write. _________________ For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.
Sonnet 109 - Shakespeare
'I'm just your ordinary, everyday sane-psycho...supergoddess' Liz Phair
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum