Who Wants to Listen to Disposable Music? from James W. Ziskin

Has an outside influence ever crept into your writing?

Of course outside influences have found their way into my work.

It’s impossible for writers to avoid it. And, in fact, if they somehow managed to shut out the world and all its influences, I doubt their writing would be of any interest to us. Our ideas and style are surely shaped by everything we hear, see, and read. 

Take language, for instance. I don’t write books and stories in my own idiolect, after all. I use a more-or-less standard Englis...