Here's a question for the writers in the crowd, or the folks who pay more attention than me to the things said by writers: how does influence happen? I'm looking for examples, I'm looking for specifics. I'm not looking for "Oh I guess I had some influence from T.S. Eliot and John Grisham but I did my own thing, yeah, wank, wank," but for like, "I tried to do this, and this is what I did when I did it in order to do it, otaku-wonk!" That sort of thing. Maybe I'm asking the wrong question.
It's like, the thing I'm writing now, working now, I can say it was influenced by Zeroville by Steve Erickson, very specifically, in that his book uses this rapid succession of short, numbered sections, a technique I stole (because yes at heart influence is basically theft), and then modified, in that part of the book uses ridiculously short sections, and the other part of the book uses only moderately short sections, averaging roughly thrice the length of the average section lengths of the other part. Because there needed to be some distinguishing stylistic characteristics between the two parts of the book and that was a pretty fundamental way to do it while keeping the parts in the same palette. And then I can say the current chapter is actually influenced by John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor, not in that it's a pastiche of seventeenth century historical fiction, but because of something he said about the book in the intro to the reprint, which is that he wanted it to feel like a narrative explosion following his much shorter and much terser first two novels. Which I liked, I liked that idea, so I've made this chapter a strategically placed sort of narrative explosion, because, why not? And I think it works, I think it has an effect. Even though it's obviously not as brilliant as Barth, but.
You might say my anxiety about this topic is blooming.
2 comments:
One of the most valuable (unexpectedly so) parts of my MFA program has been taking things like this that appeal to me in books and dissecting them in essays. Whether or not I plan to immediately use the technique, taking it apart at such a fine level makes me understand it in a way I don't think I would if I just noted it on a more surface level. It sounds like you're doing much the same thing, only skipping the essays and just doing the analyzing. I've also found that what writers say about what they're doing is often not helpful at this practical technique level. Figuring out what you think they're doing and how it works is more useful, because so much of it comes through that mysterious thing called the creative process and they don't know where every piece of it hails from either.
I wrestle with the practical usefulness of technical advice. At the same time, I don't know, maybe I've read too much into the business world, or maybe I've got too technical a mind, but I wrestle with the idea that things don't practice themselves. Step twos follow step ones. The creative process is mysterious but unlockable.
Which is a vague and incoherent response to your good comment, for which I apologize. I probably ought to essay-ize this to figure out what I'm thinking.
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