Formative Stories

Have you ever taken a look back over the formative stories in your life and how those influences your writing? Or your sense of self?

I have a theory. All those early books and stories you are exposed to, the ones you love build into you. Your childhood is formed by the stories you experience.

When I was a kid, there were stories I didn’t like and just shrugged off. But then there were stories I considered magical. Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C Wrede. The Tortall and Circle of Magic books by Tamora Pierce. The Nine Days Queen by Karleen Bradford. Various books by Patricia Briggs. A sampling of anime and manga like Sailor Moon and Magic Knight Rayearth. These stories became me.

When I read stories now, I find I can’t lose myself in them quite the same. I’ve learned too much, implemented too many academic strategies to really sink into the stories without having an opinion. The plot might be made of mesh or a character is too erratic, I can’t help but examine it with arcs and tools I’ve learned in my quest to become a better writer. In some of these stories, if I had read them when I was younger, I could have overlooked that if I was just lost in the magic of the story. The characters or creatures, the politics or the worldbuilding–something to carry me away.

I’m afraid to revisit a lot of the formative stories for me in case they aren’t as magical as I have held them in my memories. I don’t want that magic to disappear.

I’ve been wondering on what themes I keep bringing into my work–themes was always my worst subject in literature (seriously, I’m really bad with academic reading of work). But the reality is, I don’t want to look too closely. I find that if I over examine things, I lose what makes them innately magical, just as revisiting stories exposes some of the nit-picky flaws to me.

I listened to an author friend of mine get interviewed in a podcast (Glynn Stewart on the SFF Marketing Podcast). And he mentioned that readers often tell him that his works tend to explore a few themes. But he doesn’t worry about it when he’s writing because it would bog down his writing.

I had the pleasure of hearing Michael Chabon speak with creative writing grad students. “Never worry about responses,” he said (you know, roughly paraphrased because I didn’t have a tape recorder with me, just sloppy handwriting). “What you think will push buttons won’t. It’s often the trivial details you overlooked that can and will inflame people. Politics are up to the reader. Fiction should be open; the more open and interpretable the work speaks to its quality.”

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