Influence

I have decided to apply to a writing conference for the fall. I am anxious to learn what I can from industry professionals. And since I have no contacts within the publishing industry at all, I think it would be great to make some connections.

I attended a writing conference in Duluth, MN several months after I graduated college, and I have always looked back on it with fond memories (to be completely cliche). I had just finished reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and I wanted nothing more than to be Milan Kundera. The things I wrote at that conference were always with "what would Kundera do" in mind, and when I told the author leading the workshop that I feared I was plagerizing him by wanting so badly to write something that influenced people as much as his book had influenced me, she looked at me like the naive twenty-one year-old I was and told me I was more certainly not plagerizing him. My writing was my own, and it was okay to be influenced by other authors.

With that in mind, I decided to read as many brilliant authors as I could in hopes that I could one day be as brilliant as them. I don't know that I've achieved that lofty goal, but I was recently told by the teacher of the online writing course I took this spring that my writing was that of a person who has spent her lifetime reading. I am choosing to take that as a compliment, and I am still reading as much as I can, hoping to glean some style from those who have come before me and done it better than me.

With that in mind, I would love to know what books have influenced those of you who read this blog. Any thoughts?