I get asked a lot why I write, or where my ideas come
from. I don’t know the answer to either of
those questions. I started writing at an
early age. It’s something I’ve always
known I wanted to do, and I’ve never given it up.
While I
can’t answer either of those questions with a satisfactory answer, I can give
you a brief list of what has influenced me as a writer.
1.
Comic
Books
Comic books were my first literary love. I discovered comics when I was a little kid. My father worked the flea market circuit and
took me on a trip to Canton, Texas. There
was a comic dealer there who had boxes and boxes of them, all for a quarter a
piece. The cover art drew me in and the stories kept me going. I’d devour the stories about super heroes,
beg a quarter off my dad, and go back for more. I was enthralled.
It
wasn’t long after this I started writing and drawing my own. First, I wrote stories about Superman and the
Incredible Hulk duking it out, then I graduated to my own set of heroes. The first stories I sold as a writer were
comic books, written for my dad. He’d
give me a dollar to find out what happened in the next issues.
That
counts as self-published, right?
2.
History
History is another influence that got me at
an early age. History is full of
fascinating stories about heroes and villains.
Great adventures that lead to great discoveries. It was always one of my favorite subjects in
school, and when I got my hands on the history book I’d be studying that year,
I always skimmed through and picked out the most fascinating stories.
I’m
still a history buff, and read biographies when I get my hands on them. It used to be the Civil War, or Native
American histories, but now, it’s just about anything I can get my hands
on. History is so much more fascination
than fiction, because it really happened.
Lewis and Clark jumped into the great unknown west and mapped rivers and
mountains no American had seen before.
John Dillinger escaped from jail, locking up thirty people in the
process, and rode out of town in the sheriff’s car. You can’t make those kinds of things up, but
you can draw inspiration from them.
3.
Books
Books.
I just love them. I love the
smell, the feel, the covers, and what’s inside them. You’d be surprised how many people there are
that want to be writers who refuse to read.
Not me. I read every chance I get
and go through withdrawals when I don’t.
I
can’t name a particular book that made me want to be a writer. I will tell you a brief anecdote about Earnest
Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. In
my freshman year of high school, we were given a summer reading list, which I
almost immediately lost. The only book I
could remember being on the list was, For Whom the Bell Tolls, so I picked it
up and read it. I loved it. I had no idea who this Hemingway fellow was,
but that book changed everything for me.
It wasn’t just good versus evil.
It was, why is there good, and
who is evil. There were questions posed. Nothing is clear cut. This was life put into
fiction.
Turns
out For Whom the Bell Tolls wasn’t on the reading list. It was an optional, or something. But I’m glad I read it, and I’ve been a Hemingway
fan ever since.
4.
Teachers
I have bad teachers and I’ve good
teachers. The bad ones don’t care. They go through their lesson plan and rarely
look away from the board to the little faces staring up at them, or lost in their
own world waiting for the bell to ring.
The
good ones pay attention to the faces.
They give feedback. They
listen. The ones who inspired me to try
my hand at the craft of writing weren’t all English or Lit teachers. Some of them were history teachers, and some
were science. But they infused
imagination in their lesson plan. They
saw what their pupils were good or interested in and encouraged them to pursue
it. Teachers play a huge role in a
person’s formative years, and this is no less true for a writer.
5.
My Dad
I’ve already mentioned him in this article,
but he bears mentioning again. The Old
Man could tell a tale, as they say. He
was so good at it, it was hard to tell where fiction and fact merged. He knew how to put a little bit of truth into
every tale.
He was a natural
storyteller and a voracious reader. My
interest in history comes from him. He
encouraged me to write and draw and supported my comic book habit even when he
only had a few dollars in his pocket. He
wasn’t a perfect man. We had our fights
and disagreements, as fathers and sons always have and always will, but I
wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for him.
Aspects of him turn up in my writing probably
more than I am aware and I wish he was still here to read my stories, and give
me a quarter to finish the next chapter.
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