My Writing

So far, I’ve had two people supply comments on my short story.  That’s great, both have been positive.  The one comment that came through a third party got me to think.  The person said that the story had a good narrative but some ideas in the story were out there.  

This is good because I’ve again, never had a formal writing class for fiction writing except for the comments on my Epic Poem and my Lyric Poetry for my classical civilizations course.

So for this post, one because I’m bored, being a shut in with the feet of snow piling up around me.  More and more Cleveland is matching the picture I have in my head of what nineteenth century Finland must have looked like.  Also, the winter snow is finally reminding me of the snow storms of my youth growing up in the “Snow Belt.” 

Now to the blog. 

Who are the writers that inspire me, and what are the books that I’ve used for guidance to this point.  I’ve been writing or at least working on my novel for seven years.  It was my Senior year of college that I realized I wanted to become a writer and when I first seriously started to write a cognizant story.  My first short story, that I’ve still yet to finish, or have shown anyone was about the MTV invasion at Bowling Green.  We had someone who was a BG townie, remember she was not a student of the college, that appeared on MTV’s the Real World, Road Rules, and other “reality” shows.  She was also a Playboy centerfold, and while at BGSU, we were starting to regain our stupid top party school in America Playboy ranking.  That’s right sometime in the 80s BG, it must have been around the time of the BGSU NCAA hockey championship, was the toast of party colleges in America.  My time spent at BG 1997-2001 I could see the student body trying their hardest to regain this title.  This was one of the reasons why I left the school, I got sick of the scene.  Now in 2009 I miss Bowling Green and the fact that I never will be an alumnus (fingers crossed they’ll someday be able to award me an honorary doctorate.)  But never one to venture too far on a tangent, the story attacked the MTV culture and reality television.  This was written, in part, the spring of 1999, before the rest of the world started using the term reality television, oh why didn’t I finish, I probably could have entered that into the Playboy writing contest!!! 

So anyway who are my favorite writers, again I’ll go to blogospheres favorite game, a list.

These are not in any order FYI.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I never had to read the man from Minnesota’s work for school, I avoided honors English by not caring about the written word in school or at least the mechanics of the written language.  Instead I didn’t really appreciate English class until Junior and Senior year when they really became reading classes.  Straight A’s four semesters straight boy.  Now for Francis Scott, when my friend Adam who used to be in honors English was assigned a different story (I think it’s when we read Catcher, he got to read the Great Gatsby.)  So on my own I read Gatsby, my mother raised me on the Robert Redford film, again I owe my movie knowledge to mom.  I loved the book from the start and at the age of sixteen I read as much of Fitzgerald’s that I could get my hands on and that love for the master from Minnesota, and family connections and Bob Dylan connections to Minnesota have grown through  the years.  In fact I was really excited for Benjamin Button and dragged my family to see the movie on Christmas day, one word, AWESOME!

Robertson Davies

Mr. Davies, hails from Canada, another family connection spot.  My family was Quebecers but I’ve always loved the country as a whole, so his Depford Trilogy is awesome and I strive to by like Ramsey, never marry, devout myself to my job and then go from their.

Thomas Pynchon

One of the greatest writers to come from America in the latter half of the 20^th Century.  When someone says my writing is out their you can thank this man.

Jack Kerouac

Another that you can thank for my writing being out there.  I wish I could be half the writer that Kerouac was.  If you read this earlier I missed this fact, I also love Kerouac for his creation of his baseball league and the fact that he wrote "news" articles about fake players, their lives, and the games they played in this fake baseball league.  Before I ever thought about the Beat movement or any of the writers, ie. when I was 10, I also created my own league, kept stats, and wrote articles about these fake players.  My parents and teachers even caught me doing this, if only they knew about Mr. Kerouac they would have supported me on my path to being a writer even earlier. CDM)

Carson McCullers

Another great writer from America this time, the mid-century point.  She’s the one that made me want to strive on writing in a Suburban Gothic style. 

William Faulkner

The master, forget Hemmingway, Faulkner is where it’s at.  I think I finally get what he writes about.  At first I thought an extreme racist, but instead he was dropping Southern racism on it’s head.  What he did to the South along with Carson, is what I want to do to white middle class culture in the north, also the racism thing in the North needs to be understood fuller.

And Finally...

John Irving

The man lived the life as a teenager that I lived in Cleveland, except I was never as good as John at anything I did.  He wrestled, he writes about life in New England, I want to write about life in New New England. 

If you get that last reference then yeah you might get some of the things I write about.