As a writer, I am heavily influenced by Francesca Lia Block, a young adult fiction writer from California. I spent a lot of my youth reading her works, my favorite being Weetzie Bat. She is influenced heavily by Greek myth, the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez and the modernist poetry of T.S. Eliot and H.D. Of life, she says, "I believe life is infused with magic. I believe in creativity and art as experiences of magic." Her writing reflects this ideology, weaving stories set in modern day Los Angeles with wood nymphs and angels.
I am also very drawn to her ability to create imagery. Her characters are so well defined they feel like friends and family members, and she never uses the same adjective twice.
“She knew they were all afraid. But love and disease are both like electricity, Weetzie thought. They are always there -- you can't see or smell or hear, touch or taste them, but you know they are there like a current in the air. We can choose, Weetzie thought, we can choose to plug into the love current instead.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Weetzie Bat
As an adult I found myself drawn to the writings of
Anaïs Nin. Her writing shows the influence of the Surrealist movement and her study of psychoanalysis. Nin pushed the boundaries for women in regards to their expression of sexuality.
“I feel a little like the moon who took possession of you for a moment and then returned your soul to you. You should not love me. One ought not to love the moon. If you come too near me, I will hurt you.”
What are your creative writing influences?
I love to create, write, and make up anything in my mind. My writing influence are my piers. I am around so many people in my family who are always positive, always have me going, and with all of that built up around me it gives me such motivation to write just about anything. Sometimes I get ideas and write them down and when I am feeling kind of down, writing brings me up. The people around me always give me ideas to come up with new stories whether it's for my students, for my friends,or my family to listen to. know my stories always make them laugh or smile. My piers around me really bring out all of the writing in me because for the most part I'm always around the happy things and that counts a lot and making other people smile makes me feel joyous.
ReplyDeleteI used to write a lot when I was a teenager; I wrote poems and short stories. Occasionally I free write about any and everything; fiction, non fiction, poems, romance and comedy. My favorite genre to write about romance because it can be so intense and subtle.
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