What book has inspired you to write?

[M.]

Has any particular book made you want to sit down and write?

[E.A.]

Post Rating: K (But may contain spoliers of Clancy's "Red Rabbit", you were warned!)


Well, from the time I was four or five, I knew I always wanted to write. I loved books, even before I could read them. I would look up at the volumes in our home library, literally reaching up a twelve foot ceiling, nettled with frustration that I couldn't read them myself. I knew they held wonderful secrets inside, if only I could get at them!

I'd grab some paper when I could finally read and write, then stop with the realization I was not experienced to write a proper book. I tried again in third grade with a fanstasy setting about unicorns (naturally, as any self-respecting eight year old girl would write about). Then, I remember tossing it into the bin due to the same old doubts about experience.

Of course, with years, you finally acquire that sought-after experience, although writing will always remain a never-ending learning process.

I still would like to write a fantasy book, it's been shaping in my mind all these years, although I must admit I am still intimidated by Tolkien. All fantasy writers are and will be compared or contrasted with him. It is similiar to a Classical composer attempting to write a groundbreaking symphony, yet will always be compared to Beethoven and his Ninth.

Still, it would be fun to try. (I have all my maps drawn out with my fantasy kingdoms, all waiting for a story to be written about them...)

The one book that really made me want to sit down and write was Tom Clancy's "Red Rabbit" ~ it frustrated me so much, I thought I could do better! Perhaps not an espionage book, but a novel avoiding all that I perceived were his errors. Forgive me Clancy fans, maybe his other books are better, I only read "Red Rabbit":

1) "Padding" that did not have much to do with the plot, setting up the scene, or character development.


2) Repetitions in details that got on my nerves, for instance, how difficult it was to buy American cigarettes in Moscow under Communist rule, we were dished that snippet several times in the text, plus the fact Marlboros were the foreign cigarettes of choice, it sounded like a Marlboro ad!

3) A circling plot that you knew wasn't going anywhere anyway: the book was about the attempted assasination of Pope John Paul II, and the workings behind the scenes. We know he lived through it, so the book felt like a lot of hot air with no 'meat' to it. Something Clancy felt he had to write about to fulfill his contract with the publishers.

If you wanted to know how spies operated in the '80s, fine, but it felt like so much padding. I made a promise to myself that if I write a long book, I would like to see characters develop and unfold. Clancy spent way to much time setting up the scene and you didn't feel in touch with the characters. There was one or two I could finally sympathise with, the Russian spy who decides to defect, and his wife. After they defect, you don't hear anything of them and how they take to their new life in America, etc..the wife was especially dropped out of the picture. I had the feeling charaters were used as puppets when and if needed. I would have preferred to see certain threads tied off nicely. I know it's difficult when you have a lot of characters, but a few paragraphs explaining what happened to them would have not have gone amiss.