Influence and Inspiration

We all have our influences. Freud said that a person’s character is determined in their childhood, and that these early influences are inescapable. This is the reason for the Jesuit maxim: “give me a child for his first seven years, and I’ll give you the man”, writer or indeed cauliflower as may be desired.

So what happened in my childhood? I read, voraciously. I had an engineer for a father and an obsessive love of The Lord of the Rings. This is probably why my writing is almost invariably founded upon the pillars of science and attention to detail. Cheever, on the other hand, had an alcoholic for a father, which may explain why so many of his stories feature booze.

The deep end is scary.
Painting by H. R. Geiger.

But there are later influences. Right now I’m attending a creative writing course along with some very talented individuals, people who have pushed me to become a better writer. Would I be any good at writing without that? No, I’d still be in the “Lucas Hole”, subconsciously believing that Star Wars is representative of all of sci-fi. Those unaware of the genre as a whole may expect most of it to include whooshing space-battles and Star Trek technobabble, but these are things that I become less and less inclined to use. Why? Last week I was told that my work is always better when I work with the unusual, and I immediately knew that it was true. I have learned to throw my readers in the deep end, and it is something all good science fiction does.

Could it be that I am improving because I am casting off my childhood influences?

 

And with that I leave you. There will be no more posts to this blog, but please do visit my regular writing blog, Quantum Marbles.