Influence and Inspiration

I can trace the birth of my inspiration back to a 12 year old me, picking up a book on a whim called "Girls In Love" by Jacqueline Wilson. This was the book (and the trilogy that followed) that made me want to write stories of my own. Her quirky writing style spoke to me and made me feel like I was not the only young teenager to have these thoughts. From this, I began to write stories of my own, some from own perspective, others using a character I had created. As I grew up, so did my writing style. I began to look in more detail at the world around me, and I saw just how much I had missed as a young girl. I now feel I can take on darker subjects and add my own twist to them. 

I also felt very inspired by John Cheever's "The Swimmer" in his anthology. Its surrealism truly interested me and the unstable feeling it gives us of not knowing exactly when or why this is happening. I am a great lover of stories that take the reader on a journey, and this is certainly one of them. We follow this character and see his social demise as he goes from an upper-class, respected man to a nobody, at the bottom of the social heap. This is often how some of us may see our own lives, finding it difficult to maintain our position in this competitive world. 

In my mind, frankly anything can inspire us, from taking a walk in the park to experiencing a life-changing incident. I say, anything like this that you feel inspires you to write and brings you enjoyment, then do it. 

Is your writing your ‘letter to the world?’ Why? How?

I don't know about you, but I personally always feel like I'm projecting a small piece of myself onto the paper whenever I create a piece of writing. Whether it's a purely fictional character I've created in my head or a protagonist I've based on myself, I can always see my inner most thoughts reflected in them. I see myself as a somewhat average person, an "inbetweener" if you will, who has never quite failed yet never fully succeeded in life, so I tend to bring this into my stories. I will often create neither an underdog nor a success-story, I prefer to focus on an average character who feels the outside pressures of those around them. These are my small letters to the world. Emily Dickinson would always lay her heart out on the page, disguising her cries for attention in her poetry. This was a woman with a dark history, tainted with deaths and ongoing health issues. It is clear that her "letters to the world" came in blunt, poetic form and this is what helped her get through life. She became a recluse in later life, yet her words kept her motivated until her death and over 100 years later we are still discussing her life experiences. This just shows the impact a person's messages to the world can have and the continuing legacy they can have. With this thought in mind, I'm motivated to continue to reflect myself in my writing and spread my "letters to the world" around.

A protagonist that embodies the flaws and weaknesses of the writer distracts the reader from the narrative itself? Agree/disagree?

So are we easily distracted when a writer embodies parts of their own problems into a character? I would say I have somewhat mixed feelings over this matter. I can see how on the one hand, pouring out your weaknesses into a protagonist can seem like a desperate plea for attention rather than effective storytelling. However, I also see that often the best writing comes from the flaws of the writer themselves as they can connect more this way. I personally always insert part of my own traits into a character, whether it is intentional or not. Emily Dickinson was troubled from a young age by the ever looming effects of numerous deaths in her family. This became her weakness and much of her poetry focused on the subjects of death and immortality. The pain from these experiences came out more in her later works. The poem " My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close" is a clear example of her feelings over these deaths. The poem seems to say that she has lost two loved ones, and the pain from these losses felt worse than death itself. This is an example of where we become distracted by the writer's own weakness and cannot look beyond this to see the possibility of fiction. I feel every writer does at some point, but it can strengthen characters and make them more relatable. Sometimes we need to embody part of ourselves in our characters to feel a closer connection with them and give ourselves relief from these inner flaws.

A Night In New York: My Writing Process

My writing process for the first paragraph in my story involved using American author, John Cheever's narrative style. I used the "slice of life" method which involves a story occurring in a single time and place, in this case being set at night in New York in a smoking area outside a club. This is a style often used by Cheever, for instance in "The Enormous Radio". This story occurs in one apartment focusing on a radio and a couple. The story never goes outside the world of their apartment building meaning we get more insight into their life and snippets of the lives of those they can hear through their radio. I also wrote my story as a character driven piece with a slight twist at the end, as Cheever often did. The first 250 words of my story doesn't reveal this twist but I intend to bring this in later. One other Cheever method I brought into my story involves "capturing significant moments in ordinary lives with humorous compassion". This meant looking at my main character and signifying an important moment in his life when he first sees the girl he pursues throughout the story. It shows humour and compassion by looking at his appearance in a twisted way and giving the character a personality. I felt my writing process greatly benefitted from Cheever's stories as I was able to keep the focus on my character and in one place. This is a method I will take forward in my future writing.

A Night in New York

The air was thick with steam from the roads, a common sight on the New York streets. All around, the blaring choir of car horns performed in unison, drowning out the voices of the ever-chatting manhattanites walking by. The smell of fumes were fresh in his nostrils but it's what he was used to, just an average night out in New York.

Frank loved these moments, getting a breath of the city air in his lungs, before filling them with the smoke from his favourite cigarettes. Frank stood confidently in his black trilby hat, a long coat that gave him that suspicious mafia look and spit-shined shoes. He had no qualms about over-the-top appearance, nor did he care that he was blowing his smoke into the faces of passers-by. Nothing had taken his focus away from his cigarette until he spotted the most breath-taking sight of all. A young, twenty-something year old woman passed by him as she left the same club Frank has been in. Her lingering breeze that delicately stroked his face as she walked by sent a shiver through his whole body. Suddenly, his cigarette wasn't important anymore as he watched her float by towards a yellow taxi parked along the curb. He watched intently as her blonde hair danced on the wind, looking as though it was going to take off at any moment. She was clutching at a brown, leather briefcase with one hand, and holding her coat gaping open in the increasing breeze with the other.

Where are you from? What have you read? How does this impact upon your writing life?

My reading tastes have always been fairly widespread. There is currently no specific author I can pinpoint nor a favourite collection of books that I follow. However, if you were speaking to my 12 year old self, I would certainly have said Jacqueline Wilson. I'm simply a girl from Epsom, Surrey who grew up in a beautiful area with the right mix of city and, on the outskirts, country life. I did not have family issues, nor cripplingly depressive woes, so I did not feel the need to reach out for any books to "ease my pain". I just wanted to read about the lives of other girls my age and how theirs compared to mine, and reading Wilson's work fulfilled that. She would often write from the perspective of the "weird" and "awkward" girl who wanted to be like the pretty and wilder girls. Surely this was felt by almost every young girl out there? It was perfect for me. These books revolved around the protagonist Ellie, who felt she was fat, had bad, uncontrollable hair and wanted a boyfriend. She would spend her time looking at her two friends, Nadine and Magda, envying their beauty and confidence. However, Ellie is creative, intelligent and wise for her age, which she cannot see. Books such as this made me realise that I did not need to sit and watch the world go by, nor feel out of place. Although I read these books at a young age, their influence still lives with me to this day and shaped the teenager I came to be. For that I can only thank you Miss Wilson.

How is it that I became a writer?

Writing has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I come from a family of mostly manual labourers, so talks of literature and language have not been particularly common. Neither of my parents made it to A levels let alone university and have most likely never written a piece of creative work in their lives. This often leaves me to wonder where my love of writing and skill for English language came from. Back in those joyful days of school, I would consistently be one of the top spellers in my class as well as one of the fastest readers. I believe this built the foundation for me to become interested in writing. I'll be honest. I was definitely not one of the brighter kids in school and it's safe to say I didn't excel in maths, science, etc. So when I discovered a subject that I actually excelled in more than the majority of students in my class, I knew I was going to grasp onto that gift and try to make something of myself. And so here I am, at the University of Winchester studying Creative Writing and I'm still going stronger than ever. My writing and ability to tell stories is improving with every seminar and I'm enjoying it more than ever. I feel I am making myself and my family proud as I am the first to have achieved such merits. I plan to go the distance by achieving my degree and continuing with my life-long love by integrating it into a career in my future.