[NikOK]

So, I guess I was wondering if anyone else out there had that moment where you were reading someone's book and things just kind of clicked.  For whatever reason, that one book inspired you, and maybe it didn't happen right away, but it set you on this path of writing things.  If so, or if it was something similar, then what was that book?  Guess I just find it interesting where being inspired comes from, and I'd like to hear what it was for some people who have absolutely done something good about it 

For me it was when I was reading Haruki Murakami's books that I borrowed from a friend.  Here was an author from half the world away from me but he was making stories that were so relatable that it could have been about my next door neighbor.  That feeling of, we're all not so different, really stuck with me after that and it made me realize that a story about a honest human experience can make somebody somewhere say, hey, life might be different everywhere, but the people there might still be a lot like the people I know.  Heh, I guess it wasn't one exact moment, but that whole sentiment I got from his books really inspired me.

 

[K'Sennia Visitor]

  Well, I was born genetically predisposed to love stories. I loved hearing them when I was a child, but I used to hate telling my own. But I had grandparents who would encourage me to make up my own, and by age 9 I knew I wanted to be a writer.

But as far as a piece of media which really inspired me that would be Star Wars: Episode 2 - Attack of the Clones. I know most star wars fan hate that one, but the futuristic setting and world building blew me away at the time, and as I was sitting there in the cinema, that was the first time I thought, "I want to create my own universe."

And that spark lit the little acorn tree which had been growing ever since I first created my own state, and it grew and grew until it became the behemoth tentacle monster which is TUOK.

 

 

[NikOK]

Well, I was born genetically predisposed to love stories. I loved hearing them when I was a child, but I used to hate telling my own. But I had grandparents who would encourage me to make up my own, and by age 9 I knew I wanted to be a writer.

But as far as a piece of media which really inspired me that would be Star Wars: Episode 2 - Attack of the Clones. I know most star wars fan hate that one, but the futuristic setting and world building blew me away at the time, and as I was sitting there in the cinema, that was the first time I thought, "I want to create my own universe."

And that spark lit the little acorn tree which had been growing ever since I first created my own state, and it grew and grew until it became the behemoth tentacle monster which is TUOK.

Ha! Spark to tree to behemoth tentacle monster I feel like your writing has had a very interesting life cycle. And it's awesome that you started so early. Really kind of amazing.

I hear you about the star wars prequels. It helps that I saw them when I was pretty young in theatres with my dad. We didn't go to a ton of movies, but at the time, the new star wars were a huge event. Part of me wants to watch them again one day, but part of me thinks that maybe I saw them at the right time. And, no matter what, I still think they were better than the new cycle of star wars.

 

[Decon]

Moby Dick and King Solomon's Mines in my early years. Later Was God an Astronaut as an example of turning conspiracy theories and fiction to present them as plausible fact.

 

[markpauloleksiw]

Took a university course entitled the Lyrical Novel. The works we studies were The Favorite Game (Leonard Cohen), Demian (Hermann Hesse) and The Waves (Virginia Woolf)...my mind was blown away by the unique and experimental writing styles, especially The Waves.

Before that it was Jonathan Knowles'  A Separate Peace which was the prototype for coming-of-age, teen and young adult fiction for me.

Mark

 

[NikOK]

Took a university course entitled the Lyrical Novel. The works we studies were The Favorite Game (Leonard Cohen), Demian (Hermann Hesse) and The Waves (Virginia Woolf)...my mind was blown away by the unique and experimental writing styles, especially The Waves.

Before that it was Jonathan Knowles' A Separate Peace which was the prototype for coming-of-age, teen and young adult fiction for me.

Mark

Always loved Hermann Hesse's writing. Part of me misses that older style where there were a million commas and paragraphs could be one big long sentence. It takes a second to get into it when I'm reading more modern books, but it just has a different flow to it, and part of me really likes it sometimes.

 

[scott.marmorstein]

Enders Game by Orson Scott Card, The Hobbit by Tolkien, The Stand by Stephen King, all other S.K. books thereafter.

 

[zeedaye]

My mother was a book hoarder who raised us on Austen and old classical stuff. I went to school doing book reports on Mr Rochester, for example, so I was well read from early on, but I never thought about writing until Eragon by Christopher Paolini.

I know everyone gives him hell for his style, but I was a teenager and he was a teenager and I think right then it clicked in my head that there was a whole other side to books besides reading them. There was a fanfiction competition and the prize was the Eragon sequel, and I wrote night and day for a week because there was a deadline, (I'd only found out about it with days to go). I got five star reviews but I didn't win and I cried like a newborn. Shurtugal.net or something? From around 2005, 2006? (Floppy disk and internet cafe days.) The website got hacked or something and everyone lost their stories...

After that, I went down the YA fantasy rabbit hole and then the darker rabbit hole that led to GRRM and I went from trying to write a fantasy to writing the greatest fantasy ever...After Martin, I started thinking of it as a "craft" I could one day master.

I don't know, I think Murakami has the opposite effect on me. When I read Martin and Rothfuss and Sanderson, I think, "Yeah, this is doable," but Murakami makes me feel like I don't even know my ABCs. It's like watching a magic trick. I don't even try to figure out how he does it, I just applaud and nod like, "Nice, okay. I'm not trying to do that." Same for Herman Hesse. I could study writing forever and I don't think I could pull off that kind of old school wordsmith magic.

And then I read 50 Shades and I thought. "Well, hell, I can definitely do this." (It is harder than it seems.)

So, yeah... Thanks for making me thing about it. My Greatest Influences: Eragon and 50 Shades...

 

[Carol (was Dara)]

I was a kid and it was S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. No idea why that inspired me, since it's nothing like the stuff I went on to write. I just fell in love with that book.

 

[Bite the Dusty]

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

 

[Rick Partlow]

I had always liked to write even as a kid, but the books that made me want to write a novel were the Dragonlance Chronicles.  It was SO close to what I wanted to read in a fantasy series, but it had some things in it that drove me absolutely nuts.  I wanted to write something just like it but change those few things I couldn't stand.

 

[NikOK]

I had always liked to write even as a kid, but the books that made me want to write a novel were the Dragonlance Chronicles. It was SO close to what I wanted to read in a fantasy series, but it had some things in it that drove me absolutely nuts. I wanted to write something just like it but change those few things I couldn't stand.

Awesome! I read those books when I was young, and I didn't really know that other people read them too. It definitely might be something worth going back to now that I'm older because I really remember enjoying them. Wasn't there one character who just clobbered people with a frying pan? I kinda remember that and I kinda remember that it was very fun

 

[Rick Partlow]

Awesome! I read those books when I was young, and I didn't really know that other people read them too. It definitely might be something worth going back to now that I'm older because I really remember enjoying them. Wasn't there one character who just clobbered people with a frying pan? I kinda remember that and I kinda remember that it was very fun

Was that the waitress at the inn who was in love with Raistlin?

 

[NikOK]

Was that the waitress at the inn who was in love with Raistlin?

That sounds right. Honestly it's been forever since I read them. Also, I think there were little notes from the authors in the margin of the pages. It was mostly fun little behind the scenes and funny comments and things. I remember it being pretty cool and I don't think I've seen it in other books.

 

[chrisstevenson]

At 25 I read a short short in Twilight Zone Magazine, then run my Carol Sterling. I was utterly mesmerized. I followed it up with two SF novels--Poul Anderson's Virgin Planet and Alan Dean Foster's Ice Rigger. They launched my obsession into this literary wanderlust. A year after I wrote my own short stories and wrote two non fiction books, landed Richard Curtis as an agent, became a best seller, got optioned for film....on an on for three years I was totally way past my fifteen minutes of fame. It was a damn miracle I hit so fast and so heavily. I still do not believe it to this day. I never had such fame in all my life. that was 33 years ago. I have never been able to recapture that lightning in a bottle. Ever. But just recently, something great and strange is happening. I'm jostling for a book to movie deal. Impossible odds, but there is a tiny light at the end of the tunnel I can barely see. Something might me up. I don't know if it is that old lightning come back to visit me. I hope so. I am older and more weary. I pray to last.

 

[NikOK]

At 25 I read a short short in Twilight Zone Magazine, then run my Carol Sterling. I was utterly mesmerized. I followed it up with two SF novels--Poul Anderson's Virgin Planet and Alan Dean Foster's Ice Rigger. They launched my obsession into this literary wanderlust. A year after I wrote my own short stories and wrote two non fiction books, landed Richard Curtis as an agent, became a best seller, got optioned for film....on an on for three years I was totally way past my fifteen minutes of fame. It was a damn miracle I hit so fast and so heavily. I still do not believe it to this day. I never had such fame in all my life. that was 33 years ago. I have never been able to recapture that lightning in a bottle. Ever. But just recently, something great and strange is happening. I'm jostling for a book to movie deal. Impossible odds, but there is a tiny light at the end of the tunnel I can barely see. Something might me up. I don't know if it is that old lightning come back to visit me. I hope so. I am older and more weary. I pray to last.

That's awesome to hear that a book to movie deal might be happening again. It always sounds like you've had quite the ride with your writing career, and it make me smile to think that there's always another chance for big and exciting things out there. So, congrats on everything that you've been able to do, and everything that's still coming.

And, I really like the imagery of "old lightning". I know you meant it as your old lightning, but now I'm picturing a walking-talking crochety lightning bolt with long frizzy lightning hair. Heh, somewhat off topic, but it made me laugh. Maybe something for a dream sequence or a really strange story.

 

[LGOULD]

For me, childhood fairy tales seemed to trigger the urge to create make-believe worlds.

 

[Gareth K Pengelly]

I got lent a dog eared copy of a horror novel by a friend when I was a kid. It was The Pariah, by Graham Masterton. I'd never had a book scare me so much, and it turned me into a voracious reader.

In my teens, I got into playing Warhammer, the table-top game with the little model soldiers. Started reading the books that went along with that, too.

 

[Blerg et al.]

Was that the waitress at the inn who was in love with Raistlin?

Tika! She eventually

Spoiler

took over the inn

and married

Spoiler

Caramon

.

I would say Dragonlance was the the first one that really got me to start writing. I was probably fourteen at the time.

 

[NikOK]

Tika! She eventually

Spoiler

took over the inn

and married

Spoiler

Caramon

.

I would say Dragonlance was the the first one that really got me to start writing. I was probably fourteen at the time.

That's right! There were a whole bunch of fun characters in those books.