Some writers pride themselves on saying they never read other people’s books, at least not people working in the same genre as they are, saying they don’t want to be influenced by someone else’s work. I find this a truly bizarre and barbaric notion. How can a writer not be a reader too? How can you possibly try to quarantine yourself from ‘influence’–which is really a creatively incubating culture, and not some kind of contagious bacteria destroying originality? I’m not talking of plagiarism here, which is the out and out theft of other people’s work, but about the enrichment of a writer’s mental furniture, the deepening of their emotional range, the texturing of their intellectual potential. Whether that be classic authors or more modern ones, knowing what other people have written, thinking about it, engaging with it, makes all the difference to the strength and power of your own writing. An author without ”influence”–if such a mythical beast can truly exist– would write merely hollow, navel-gazing books which would most likely fail to click with readers. 

I can’t begin to estimate just how important other writers’ influence has been, and is, to me. From the very beginning, when as a non-English speaking migrant child newly arrived in Australia, I was introduced to English-language children’s books, I was off and away on an extraordinary journey through the world of literature. I devoured books as fast as I could get them off the library shelves. I read in both English and in my native language, French, racing through CS Lewis, Herge (Tintin books), Tove Jannsson, Leon Garfield, Alexandre Dumas, Roger Lancelyn Green, Jean de Brunhoff (Babar), Patricia Wrightson, Philippa Pearce, Louise May Alcott, Jules Verne, Enid Blyton, and lots lots lots more. From early on, I wanted to emulate my favourite writers, and wrote little comic strips a la Tintin, fairy stories, school stories, all sorts of bits and pieces, totally influenced by what I read. Later, when, as a teenager, I got into poetry and plays, I also tried my hand at writing in the styles and forms of those poets and playwrights I loved best: Shakespeare, Yeats, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Tennessee Williams, William Blake, Robert Browning, and so on and on. I counted sonnet lines and tried my hand at shoe-horning verse into ancient bardic forms, tried to write snappy dialogue and tragic scenes. It was all highly influenced, highly coloured by what I’d read. But not only was I enriching my mental furniture by reading, I don’t think I could have found a better way of practising to become a writer. Challenging and extending myself, not staying within the narrow world of home-school-home that I lived in as a kid but roaming the wide worlds of my, and other people’s imaginations.

People will often tell aspiring writers, ‘Write about what you know.’ To me, that should not mean staying within the bounds of your own experience; it means staying true to your emotional core, whilst being ready to tackle all kinds of structures, forms, plots, ideas. Don’t be afraid to use the reading that you have done as much as the things that you know about from personal experience: for that reading has expanded and enriched what you know, so your writing will be all the sronger for it. Voice, which is really where a writer’s originality lies, comes out of that mix of individuality and influence.

Writing about other people’s work can be an interesting way of understanding that influence, too. Recently, I’ve been a contributor, amongst many other writers for young people, to some exciting books of essays about important and popular writers for young people: writers whose books have inspired and enthused me, both as a child and now. Writing about the work of authors such as CS Lewis, Philip Pullman and Rick Riordan, I came to an understanding of not just what had first attracted me to their novels, but also about their own strong, rich literary influences, and how engaging with their books had expanded me not only as a reader but as a writer. Not only did writing these pieces show me things I had hardly even begun to think about, consciously, it also showed me how other writers also included in the essay anthologies, saw these important and influential writers. Truly a creatively incubating culture of influence! 

Note: The anthologies on Philip Pullman (The World of the Golden Compass, edited by Scott Westerfield); CS Lewis (Through the Wardrobe, edited by Herbie Brennan) and Rick Riordan (Demigods and Monsters, edited by Rick Riordan himself) are published by Ben Bella Books, USA, and are Borders exclusive titles. The World of the Golden Compass was released late last year; Through the Wardrobe is being released this month; Demigods and Monsters will be released later this year.

ETA: Order information for THROUGH THE WARDROBE is now available. Click HERE to order!

Sophie Masson has published more than fifty novels internationally since 1990, mainly for children and young adults. A bilingual French and English speaker, raised mostly in Australia, she has a master’s degree in French and English literature. Her most recent novel, The Madman of Venice, was written for middle school children, grades ~6-10.
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