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Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Saturday, July 4, 2015
Writing Under the Influence
I know it’s
kind of like a magician revealing how his tricks work, but I am about to share
with you the deep, dark secret of writers.
I mean ALL writers. Anyone who
has ever put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard or dreamed up a catchy little
ditty in their head. But you have to
promise not to tell anyone because, well, then it wouldn’t be a secret any
more, right? Promise? Okay, here it is. Every writer across the ages and throughout
the world has written under the influence!
Oops, that
didn’t come out quite right. Allow me to
clarify.
I don’t mean
that writers are their most brilliant when under the influence of drugs or
alcohol or even chocolate (although many writers I know do consider chocolate
to be the universal muse summon-er). I
mean every writer writes under the influence of someone whose words s/he has
read and admired. Someone who inspired
them with a particularly well turned phrase, or brought them to tears with an
emotionally packed passage, or sent their heart racing with a description so
vivid and vibrant it’s as if the reader were actually teetering on a cliff
overlooking an angry sea. An aspiring
writer will read something so poignant or profound they say to themselves, I want to write like that.
It happens to
all of us.
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