Writers That Have Influenced Me

Today I thought I'd talk about some of the great writers that influenced me.   There have been numerous writers that have changed and helped to form my views, and hopefully this trend will continue as I discover other writers, whether old or new.   Life should be a process of growth and discovery until the ultimate ending of it.  A wise man admits his faults and limitations and realizes that there is more to understand and learn then is humanly possible.  Our time on this planet is very brief and there is never enough time to do all that we would wish.   The key is to do as much as we can with the time that is given to us.   These words have been said by many people in many different forms of medium and it is a deep truth.

But I am digressing from my point.   The first book that I read that made me think I wanted to be a writer was something from the Goosebumps Series of R.L. Stine and the Bunnicula series of books, again I was in the fourth grade at time that it struck me that I'd love to craft stories.   Since a young age I've always had a love of story and things of the imagination.   It did not occur to me until around the age of 11 that I loved to write, even though my biggest failing was and still is grammar and style.   These two concepts are very hard for me to master, and why I sometimes ask for help with my writing from friends who are better educated than me.

The first book I noticed that started to change my viewpoint or open eyes to the reality of the world was the Sword of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind.   And I enjoyed the subtle messages hidden within it through the art of storytelling; but when he started to beat my head with openly obvious lecturing I begin to lose interest in the story; when it become more about the messages he was preaching then the story.  The last story he wrote that I liked in that series of books was Faith of the Fallen, or something like that.   It's a good book on anti-communist ideas I think and the freedoms of the individual are more important than the conformity of a community and equality that doesn't really exist.   It was also during this time that I discovered other great writers that helped form my desires to be a writer, such as Harlan Ellison, Robert Asprin, C.L. Moore, Meredith Pierce, and J.R.R. Tolkien.  Much later I would come to discover the works of Hideyuki Kikuchi, Kaoru Kurimoto, Robert E. Howard,George R. Martin, Robert Heinlein, and many others.

The core authors that inspire me are;  Harlan Ellison, (you should check out the documentary on him called Dreams With Sharp Teeth) J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and Hideyuki_Kikuchi.