The Words That Changed Your Life: Discovering What Made You a Writer

For me, it’s almost become a cliché answer: “I write because stories have always been my language. I write because my very first memory is telling myself a story.”

“Why do you write?” and “What made you a writer?” are two questions I’m ubiquitously asked in interviews. I can respond to those questions in my sleep. I don’t even think about their answers anymore.

And that, as I’m now realizing, is a shame.

As artists, our early influences were more than just the first domino in our journeys. They were more than “just” formative. They were the experiences that shaped us into the people and writers we have become. Sometimes these influences are conscious: some writers can recall a specific book or movie that made them say, “I want to be a writer.” But even in these situations, the subconscious impact is often far deeper and more telling.

Last week, I talked about how inspired I was by the essay anthology Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process. In it, dozens of authors shared what they felt were formative passages in their own early reading, and then expounded on why and how they felt these influences had shaped their artistic journeys.

Editor Joe Fassler explained in his foreword:

I ask working artists (many of them writers) to choose a favorite passage from literature, the lines that have hit them hardest over the course of a lifetime’s reading. Each person looks closely at his or her selection, explains its personal impact, and makes a case for why it matters. Taken together, these pieces offer a rare glimpse into the creative mind at work—how artists learn to think, how they find inspiration, and how they get things done.

Needless to say, I recommend the book. In addition to inspiring last week’s post about the 4 Reasons We Write, it has also prompted me to take a closer look at my own early influences—and to try my hand at choosing and examining a formative passage of my own.

A Journey Through Yourself: The Difficulty in Discovering Your Influences

In Light the Dark, the gathered authors make it look so easy to find your influences. Most of them seemed to know immediately which passage had most impacted them—as if they carried it around in the warm space under their hearts and were overjoyed to carefully pull it out and share it.

During the evenings when I read this book, I often found myself sitting back in puzzlement. What were my early influences? I read Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, The Black Stallion, Trixie Belden, Little House on the Prairie, Smoky the Cowhorse, and lots and lots of terrible Star Wars novels. Were those my influences? If so, then how… cliché.

Or was the formative influence really something I’d read a little later on when my tastes started to mature? Was it perhaps a favorite author such as Patrick O’Brian? How about the bazillion classic authors I’ve read and loved—Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad? Or was that just brownnosing?

Maybe, as a product of my generation, I was actually more influenced by movies than books. After all, when I made up stories in my childhood, I would call them “my movies.” Maybe it was one of the many westerns I all but memorized—everything from The Magnificent Seven to True Grit to Red River to She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Or maybe it was Star Wars after all: I vividly remember the trash-compacter scene from my first viewing when I was ten or eleven. Maybe it was Robin Hood or Indiana Jones or The Great Escape.

Gah. Insanity! And then I was supposed to be able to narrow it down further to one passage that shaped the entirety of my artistic life? It was starting to make me feel less inspired, rather than more.

But then I reached the last essay, Neil Gaiman’s, in which he blithely subverted the whole premise of the book:

…you don’t even necessarily understand [when you’re  young] where all your influences are coming from, or what they can mean, nor should you. They compost down anyway, good influences, no matter how old you are. It’s like when you put the scraps onto your compost heap: eggshells, and it’s half-eaten turnips, and it’s apple cores, and the like. A year later, it’s black mulch that you can grow stuff in. And influences, good ones, are that too. Trying to figure out what’s influenced you is as difficult as taking the black mulch, and saying this used to be half an apple.

Of course.

Trying to make our artistic passion the result of a single influence is like trying to define our lives by a single experience.

Realizing that took the pressure off. I started thinking about the question from another angle. Instead of trying to identify the one single story that started me on my journey, I started thinking about what it is that defines me as a storyteller. What stories am I inevitably telling—and where did they come from? Why am I telling these stories?

So here’s what I came up with. If I have to choose one passage to encapsulate my “creativity, inspiration, and artistic process,” this is what it has to be…

The Light in My Dark: What My Formative Influences Tell Me About My Writing

“Oh my best brother that ever I had!” cried Wallace, in a sudden transport, and kissing his pale forehead; “my sincerest friend in my greatest need. In thee was truth, manhood, and nobleness; in thee was all man’s fidelity, with woman’s tenderness. My friend, my brother, oh would to God I had died for thee!”—Jane Porter, The Scottish Chiefs

When I was maybe six or seven, my dad brought home this big old copy of what some people consider to be the seminal historical novel: Jane Porter’s lushly romantic (and highly imaginative) ode to the roles of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce in the Scottish War for Independence.

For many years, I would have said it was my favorite book. Looking back now, I can tell you it’s historically suspect, blatantly melodramatic, sometimes even silly. But even though I haven’t read it in years, thinking about this book still stirs me—especially the death scene quoted in that passage. I remember absolutely bawling over this scene, which was something I never did, even as a child.

In reading histories of Scotland a few years ago, I was surprised by how vividly it all came back to me. When I think of this war and envision the people who took part in it, the images I see are still those vivid iterations inspired by N.C. Wyeth’s gorgeous illustrations and Jane Porter’s words.

Today, when I decided to pull the book of my shelf to re-read this dimly remembered passage I had chosen, I surprised even myself. In some ways, my choice of this book was random—and my choice of this particular passage even more random. In reading it once again, I was blown away to see so much of myself there in those words.

When I look at the body of work I’ve created over the years—when I think about the stories still in my head waiting to be told—when I examine the stories of others I’m most drawn to and moved by—what I find is that they are inevitably the stories that share the deep archetypal weft of heroic symbolism.

They are stories about brotherhood. They are stories about sacrifice. They are stories about laying down your life for your friends and your cause. They are stories about haunted, scarred loner-leaders. They are stories about extraordinarily gifted people and the inevitability that from those who have much, much will be asked. They are stories about the redeeming worth of relationships.

I mean that’s it. And it’s all right there in that one single passage from one of the earliest stories I can remember.

Even though I went looking for my early influences, I honestly did not see that coming. It’s completely cool and, honestly, a little overwhelming.

It helps me bring into alignment all the many other influences that have marked the roadside of my artistic journey. It all makes a little more sense now: the definitive archetypalism in Star Wars, the loner heroes of John Ford’s idealistic westerns, the thematic depth of Robin Hood’s adventures. Disparate as they are, they are all part of an arrow-straight line pointing me to every story I’ve ever written or, I think, ever will write.

Writing Like You Will Be Someone’s Formative Influence

If you read this blog with any regularity, then you probably know I’m all about the subtext. I’m all about chasing down the hidden, often subconscious, meanings—in stories and also in life. No surprise then that I believe an exploration of your own formative influences is a vastly worthwhile venture. Certainly, my own experience with this little exercise has been not just fun, but enlightening. It’s provided me much food for thought in moving forward with a better understanding of why I’m drawn to write the kind of stories I write.

But here’s another thing it’s made me realize: our stories—yours and mine—have the potential to similarly impact other young readers. In his essay in Light the Dark, Jim Crace wrote:

We should never underestimate what it is that will turn a young person into someone who wants to love literature. Or the young person who wants to make music, or the young person who is attracted to lyric. How are these people formed? They’re not formed by being sent to do MFAs in creative writing. That’s too late. They’re formed by early encounters.

This week, my young niece had her first encounter with one of my own childhood favorites—Disney’s animated Robin Hood. When the film reached the part where Robin Hood apparently drowns, she started weeping and kept on until her mom hurried in to fast-forward to where it’s revealed Robin survives.

Think that’s “just” a story?

Whether she remembers it or not, she just had a formative experience. Will she write about Robin Hood someday? Will she shape her life around stories of self-sacrifice? (Or, I don’t know, maybe just be scared to ever go swimming?) Who knows? But she was shaped, just as our readers can’t help but be shaped whenever they encounter our stories.

Today, I find myself challenged and inspired to carry on the torch. The authors who inspired us gave to each of us a spark. Every time we dig deep and share honestly, every time we put in the due diligence to write with all the clarity and passion we can muster—we are using those sparks to build another fire. We have no idea who will see its light and maybe wander over to sit for a while. We have even less of an idea which of them will catch an ember, tuck it away in that special place beneath their hearts, and carry it with them for the rest of their lives.

But today when you sit down to write, I challenge you to remember: somebody will. Go light the dark.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! If you had to pick one author, who would you choose as the one that made you a writer? Tell me in the comments!

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