Half of a tiny 4x6" watercolor, looks odd blow up.

I Accidentally Stole From Chuck Palahniuk

And a bunch of other people. You do it too, even if you’re not a writer. Thoughts on the things that inspire us.

I found out on the toilet, which is as good as place as any to find out you aren’t as smart as you think you are. Safe.

I recently did an author interview and one of the questions was about which modern authors have influenced my prose. This was my response which is equal parts douchy and sincere:

This is a complicated question. I don’t know that any modern author influences my actual prose but so many authors, writers and storytellers have a profound impact on the way I think and experience the world. Aldous Huxley was the first person to tell me that magic was real when I was fourteen. George Carlin taught me to question everything. Jack Kerouac to live the stories I want to tell. Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Mike Mignola, Ken Kesey, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Chris Cornell, Franz Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut, Shel Silverstein and so, so, so many others influence me all day, every day. These are my heroes, my uncles, my psychologists, my friends, my adversaries, my teachers, my shepherds, my mentors, my role models.

I was being honest. I really didn’t think any remnants of modern-lit crept their way into my writing. I’ve spent the day discovering I was wrong.

I had a stack of old paperbacks on the counter that I was using as reference for laying out and typesetting my book — on the way to the potty I grabbed the top book, a frayed copy of Fight Club, for entertainment.

I haven’t read any of Uncle Chuck’s work in years.

I always enjoyed his writing, but I never aspired to emulate him in any way. When I saw his prose and all those single sentence paragraphs I got sick to my stomach (again, I was in the right place). It’s a motif for him and I’d used it during a few dramatic scenes in the book to create the right rhythm. I knew immediately this was where I’d gotten that tool. I was 17 (and 18 and 25) when I read Fight Club and it was a big deal for me. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever read — that’s what I loved and admired most.

After I came out of the bathroom I spent the rest of the afternoon thumbing through books, searching for more evidence of thievery. Some might call it influence but I covet originality and novelty above everything (INTP BABY!), so I don’t see it this way — I want so badly to be something new, or at the very least be novel in expressing something old. That’s probably why I put “Girl” in the title of my first book; because I took it the exact opposite direction of every other psychological thriller with a similar title — I’m hoping people are skeptical going in. I’d rather be clever than successful.

With a copy of my novel in hand for comparison, I found all sorts of unsettling similarities with every book I’ve ever loved. There was a Lord Wotton-y bounce to a few of my faux-insightful quips. Some near-endless sentences with no commas and a bunch of conjunctions that read like an establishing paragraph for a restaurant hornswoggled into a scene in A Farewell to Arms and I didn’t like it and I don’t know why I wrote it the way I did. My constant use of invented super-supercilious compound adjectives like in Beowulf. (Obviously I am not comparing the quality of my work to any of these things, that would be unspeakably stupid, read on.)

Then I remembered I’m a human being and relief washed over me in an awesome wave (was that Bret Easton Ellis? MOTHER F….jk, jk). We’re built to see patterns, even when they aren’t there. I am the sum of every word I’ve ever read, multiplied by the words I’ve written and divided by zero (the subconscious). This is no more thievery than speaking in English. Sure, these aren’t “my” symbols, but they are the symbols we’ve all agreed to use. Embrace what you are, add more to the equation. It’ll come out different every time, even if you mean to rip someone off. But don’t do that. Do it on accident and then call it “influence.”

Don’t dance like nobody’s watching. Write like nobody’s ever written. If a little bit ends up looking a tiny bit like someone else, wtfever.

All of the doodles in my Medium posts are original, physical pieces of art. Most are for sale, you can contact me if interested. You are permitted to use the images for any non-commercial use provided you watermark it with my name and website, www.mikewehner.com