{"id":9150,"date":"2011-10-20T06:30:21","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T17:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=9150"},"modified":"2011-10-19T21:44:49","modified_gmt":"2011-10-19T08:44:49","slug":"writers-are-thieves-aka-influences-on-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/10\/20\/writers-are-thieves-aka-influences-on-story\/","title":{"rendered":"“Writers Are Thieves”—aka Influences on Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, in our interview here<\/a>, Daniel Abraham said that: “More than [being] readers, writers are thieves.” <\/em><\/p>\n

Fellow author and friend, Mary Victoria<\/a>, commented: ” … yes, yes, yes. We use a bit of this and a bit of that. We borrow from each other, from the common store of history and myth. We even raid our own memories \u2026 nothing is sacred!”<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course I had to respond that I preferred the word “magpies” to “thieves” ( \ud83d\ude09 ) but the principle is the same. There was a synergy for me in this discussion, because only the day before I had been at Christchurch’s South library, talking about—amongst other things—influences on my work. Or in other words, about all the treasure trove of ideas, artefacts, and experiences over the years that had caused my magpie self to think: “Shiny!” Or “Bright! Or “Gleamy, and Sheeny, and Glittery!” (I was going to say “sparkly”, but you know, those<\/em> vampires—just can’t go there.) And then purloin them for my writer’s melting pot—long before I consciously decided to be<\/em> a writer.<\/p>\n

I’ve talked about influences on story before and you can check out the collected posts here<\/a>. The thievery Daniel Abraham referred to yesterday was of those elements of literature that delight you a reader—and promptly want in your own stories. And as I said in my Influences of Story post on February 3rd<\/a>, other writing is undoubtedly an influence on any writer’s development. Diving into the vast sargasso sea of literature always sparks ideas and ‘what ifs’, and on February 3 I showed how this process might work using the example of Hilaire Belloc’s poem, Tarantella<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Other sources for magpie gleaning that I mentioned in my library talk included:<\/p>\n