90 Day Writing Challenge - Week 8

We're just not even going to discuss my progress last week. I really don't know that I wrote anything beyond my blog post. It was just a bad week, all around. So, let's just skip ahead to this week's question.

My writing inspiration. I'm taking this to mean something more than my inspiration for my actual stories - especially since I'm pretty sure that there was a "where do you get your ideas" question a while back. And I am also pretty sure that we did the "why do you write" question. So, obviously this question means something a bit different than either of those potential meanings for the word "inspiration". I'm taking it to be a kind of "writing role models" kind of question. So, that's what I'm going to answer.

And the big one, for me, is Anne Bishop. I have lost track of the number of times I've read her Black Jewels Trilogy. Often enough that I read one set to destruction and had to buy new ones. (unfortunately, I have also lost track of who I lent it to, so I need to replace it, now). And it still affected me just as much on the most recent reading as it did on the first. I cannot read those books without crying - and laughing. And that is what I want for my readers. I want them to care about these people so much that they cry at the sad scenes. I want them to know these people so well, that they laugh at innocent seeming lines, because they can just imagine the looks on the characters' faces. And I want them to want to read it more than once. I want my books to be the old friends that readers turn to again and again.

I know that's a pretty tall order. And I know that I am no Anne Bishop. But it is certainly a goal to aspire to - to want to have the same effect on my readers that she had on me. While I can't credit her books with making me want to be a writer - I've wanted that for so long, I couldn't begin to try to remember what originally inspired that - she has definitely inspired my writing ever since discovering her.

There are others that have had a similar effect on me - Mercedes Lackey, especially The Last Herald Mage series; Anne McCaffrey's Acorna and Pern series; David Eddings Elenium series (and whatever the sequel to that was called, I seem to have forgotten it, at the moment.); a few others. But that is the one that sticks with me the most.

Anyway, that's my biggest writing inspiration. I'll talk to you all again this weekend with this week's check-in.