Influences

 I worried about reading while I was writing, thinking there might be influences that might become copying. Except, I figured being in my fifties, I figured I was past being influenced - for good or for ill. Maybe, maybe not, I think now there is much still to be learned about writing techniques while I am pretty sure my ideas of subjects are not really going to change.

“A clear voice tends to be contagious.” Biography of X author Catherine Lacey on the mysteries of influence makes me think I was on the right track:

The voices of certain writers, however, have a certain parasitic quality. (This may not seem like a compliment, but I think it mostly is.) Say you read some Thomas Bernhard, then you try to write someone an email. In my experience, the email has a taste of Bernhard in it, like an apple that’s been cut after a clove of garlic. (Long, slightly irate sentences full of repeated phrases and an ambient paranoia.)

We may have our ideas set, but we can always learn new ways to say what is on our minds. Picasso comes to mind.

sch 4/22