Today’s blog is inspired by a short piece from the New York Times Book Review section. A couple of authors were asked “What are your nonliterary influences?” My favorite reply came from James Parker. He declared that comedians were some of his greatest motivators:
“…I’m thinking not of individuals, but of a generic comedian-figure: the stand-up comic. Spotlit, framed by vacancy, existentially alone. By what right does he or she hold this space? By no right at all, unless it be the right of sheer presence. Which is more or less how I feel every time I start a piece of journalism: Better get out there and, you know, own it somehow. Flatten the inner heckler with a spinning back-kick of an adverb. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to begin a review or an essay casually, in media res, like Edmund Wilson–as if the reader has just walked into the salon where I’ve been droning superbly for the last two hours. But not yet. I should add that I could never be a stand-up comic, because I can’t think on my feet. I literally have no access to language unless I’m sitting down.”
Beautifully put.
In this blog, I’ve written about some of my nonliterary influences, including musician Regina Spektor, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, and painfully ordinary, everyday surroundings.
Beyond all that, I’m an observer. I watch and listen; I take-in people’s features and listen to the texture of their voice. I notice others’ moods and wonder about their stories. This kind of curiosity and ultra-sensitivity to my surroundings has spurred several ideas for books and short stories.
That, and dreams. Extraordinary ideas sometimes pop out of my subconscious.
How about you? What are some of your nonliterary influences?
Author: KateBitters
Kate Bitters is a Minneapolis-based author and freelance writer. She is the author of Elmer Left, Ten Thousand Lines, and He Found Me. One of her proudest/nerdiest moments was when Neil Gaiman read one of her short stories on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater.
Movies come to mind immediately. I find not a few of the transitions I employ are directly inspired by films, Cloud Atlas for example. Work is another big one. I work in a psychiatric hospital, directly interacting with the patients on the unit on a daily basis. They each provide interesting observations, issues, complaints, or tragedies from which I can draw.
Thank you for your comments, Owen. I think writers can learn a lot from film (i.e. how to stage a scene in which your readers can lose themselves). And, yes! Work can usually provide lots of great fodder if you pay attention. Before solely working as a freelance writer, I held several service industry jobs….oh the stories I could tell!
Inspiration for me, literally, comes from everywhere. It's often the little things. Granted I probably won't write an entire story based simply on the way a napkin folded on the table, in a manner reminiscent of a book closing, once it was thrown down at the end of dinner, but it's still a fantastic visual that gets me going to write about such a scene.
I'm currently working on a novel that's based on a newspaper article I wrote about a year and a half ago. Can't beat the weird things that people do in real life if you're looking for fiction fodder! But still, you have to fill in the pages with little bits of inspiration from somewhere.
And should tell!
Seems like a lot of inspiration is structural, as in how can you weave actual observations into a fantastical series of thematically linked parts, sections that are divorced by eons of time and space, but when put together in just the right way form a coherent picture. That's something great classical historians used to do. Most of Herodotus is rubbish as far as facts go, but the story he weaves from so many strands–minus his digressions–is inspired indeed.
Perhaps I should. I did write one post a few years ago about an interesting fellow I met at a bank (http://www.thebitterblog.net/2012/04/bruce-in-your-life.html).
…But the tales from my waitressing days are much more interesting!
I love the imagery of napkin folded like a book closing. I can tell you're a poet at heart, Mavin. I certainly am too and sometimes people don't quite understand the way my brain operates. For instance, today (despite the bitter cold), I found inspiration in the frost patterns on my car's windshield. There's beauty all around us if we pay attention.
And Owen, I agree with the Herodotus reference. A captivating storyteller!
The pattern on a windshield or a trash bag fluttering in the breeze! hashtagAmericanBeauty!
Thanks 🙂 Poetry was my first literary love. I've strayed a bit, but it will always have a place with me. On the topic of inspiration, there are few things that inspire me more than just the reading of some good poems. Reading the work of James Tate and Billy Collins basically requires me to write afterward.