Readerly/Writerly Influences Contest!

[kathleenfoucart]

Hi all! To kick off my summer blogging extravaganza*, I decided to have a contest! But what to do and what to give away... I have no book of my own to give away yet. I have no highly-anticipated ARCs lying around at the moment (in fact, I think every ARC I have now has a corresponding 'real book'). So I've been thinking long & hard (as much as

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One influence

[heidihumbug]

I think I had several, but one of the biggest was Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings. Beautiful language, and it was about becoming a write too! It was required for my AP English senior year in high school, and I had some ideas I might want to write before then, of course, but that one helped quite a bit.

[roseleaf]

Katherine Paterson was my biggest readerly influence. Out of all the books I loved, hers were the ones I remember reading over and over and over, and whose characters deeply affected me. I've gone through several copies of Bridge to Terebithia and The Great Gilly Hopkins because I read the paperbacks so often, the covers fell off.

[hinode]

Although I'm not a writer, I've loved reading since I can remember. There was a set of YA books I LOVED in early middle school with a 13-ish year old girl as the main character, but I have no idea what they were called. Her name started with an M I think. After that, the books that I loved the most were probably those by Terry Brooks, specifically his Shannara series. He made wonderful characters, a great world, and is still coming out with new books. Although there were many other books I adored in that same genre, his are the ones I remember the most vividly. I considered becoming a fiction writer, and I think his books were a main influence.

[wldhrsjen3]

I don't know that I could point to any one book or any one series of books that made me want to be a writer... I think the urge to tell stories was always there, simmering beneath the surface. But as a kid my favorite books were either horse books (Marguerite Henry, Walter Farley, and Jesse Haas) or fantasies (Susan Cooper, David Eddings, Tolkien, Terry Brooks, Raymond E Feist, Lloyd Alexander). When I was in 7th grade, a local author came to our school to promote her book. I'm ashamed to say I can't recall her name or the title of her book - it was from a small press and I doubt the book sold many copies - but the fact that a Real Live Author came to *my* school made a huge impression on me. I remember her talking about how she spent her time writing and reading and doing research, and I just knew that was what I wanted to do, too. :) Up until then, I had stapled together papers to make play books or little scrap books for myself, but meeting her made me realize that ordinary people like me could write books for real.

[chaz_lehmann]

John Grisham. First writer I ever read that made me think, "I can do that." I've become less fond of his writing over the years, but he's the first writer that made me think I could write. Not at all the most influential, though... that would probably be Stephen Lawhead.