Under the Influence

“…angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night..”

This line, from Allen Ginsberg’s monumental 1956 poem Howl, is what first stoked the fires of writing in my head. I remember clearly where I was when I first read it; in the backseat of a Hyundai Santa-Fe cruising up the interstate, heading back home to Cincinnati after a college visit to the University of Alabama. I was wearing a starched-white dress shirt and khakis, crunched in next to my two brothers against the window. During the weekend, a UA student had showed us around the campus. We started talking about books and music, and he suggested that I read Allen Ginsberg, specifically Howl. I told him I would. When we loaded up the car to begin our long drive home, I pulled out my phone and searched for the poem. It was much longer than I had expected, but from the first line I was hooked. Then, two lines in, I found the above line. Every single word in this wonderful collection of images hit me like a series of aftershocks. Right then, I knew; I wanted to create these images. I didn’t write my own work for a while, but that was the moment that I believe I began as a writer.

Influence is an odd thing. We speak of our influences all the time, and yet how many of them have actually had an impact upon our style? When I consider my influences, there are a few different classes. There are authors that have influenced my style, authors that have influenced my ideas, and authors that have made me more comfortable with my own writerly discomfort. Among this first class of authors are names such as Vladimir Nabokov, James Joyce, Jonathan Franzen, Douglas Adams, and many others; Nabokov for the sheer beauty of his prose, Joyce for how he played with language, Franzen for his blunt wit and honesty, and Adams for the sheer fun of his style. My own style has been molded by many authors aside from these, but when I come back to my words I have a tendency to lean more toward moving imagery than stasis, more toward words that are fun to read as opposed to terse and pointed. It’s simply a quirk of mine; I love joyful prose, and I strive to write as such. As always, emulation gives way to many, many rounds of editing because no individual writer is alike. As Franzen said in an interview with The Paris Review, “The writer’s life is a life of revisions”. In writing, as much as I try to be stylistically like my influence, I realize that simply copying is worthless. Thus, I have learned to edit mercilessly by emulating these and other authors. In this way, I have begun to shape my own style from their influence.

This is not to discount the influence of authors such as Hemingway, whose writing lacks the flowery ornaments and playful structure of the aforementioned names but has nonetheless greatly influence my writing. Hemingway was my first love when it comes to literary fiction. Upon finishing A Farewell to Arms in high school, I realized that I had actually enjoyed a reading for school. Much of this was due to the ideas behind the story, the plot itself, the characters, and the structure that the words formed a scaffolding for. Other authors such as Neil Gaiman and Haruki Murakami have also influenced the ideas of my writing. When I write fiction (as most of my creative writing aside from poetry is), I drift toward simple stories with a tinge of the surreal (thus a fusion of these two camps). There is a certain magical aspect that I love to include in my writing, reflecting elements of reality while subtly twisting it a bit, to get the reader a bit out of their normal existence. Of course there are countless other authors whose stories I love, and whose plots have given me many ideas, but these three have laid the foundation for most of the stories I write; Hemingway for the emotional realism, Gaiman and Murakami for the magical tinge.

Now, aside from the actual finished product, there are writers (including some already mentioned) who have influenced me in a way that is almost more important than the words themselves; the work ethic. A few years back, Neil Gaiman posted his wishes for his fans in the new year. One of the lines included was this: “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes…you’re doing something”. In my writing, as mentioned before, I have to edit constantly. I hate a good deal of my work, and many times feel almost as if I am an imposter. This quote has given me solace in realizing that, no matter what, as long as I continue to write I am improving. Any rejections of my work, bad sentences, hackneyed plots; they all are working to make me better. Furthermore, in Stephen King’s excellent book On Writing, he writes that “The scariest moment is always just before you start”. I have incredible fear of the blank page, yet knowing that authors as prolific as King face this same fear also gives me the confidence to simply begin spitting words onto the page and hoping they stick.

Now, where does all this lead? As I chip away at the block of nothingness that is my writing future, I hope to one day influence someone else. A tall hope, most likely, but the fact that these authors have given me the confidence and drive to begin writing myself tells me that if I keep at it, I have the potential to help someone else discover their own love for words. I will continue to find new authors that influence my work, I am sure, but in the end I have a feeling that the first few who truly inspired me will never leave and will continue to help shape me until the end.