Childhood Stories

The stories that you read as a child affect your life as an adult. When a writer reads a story, he is not only inspired in a personal way, but his imagination, and even his reason for writing in the first place, can be affected. I grew up on Tolkien’s and Lewis’s works. I was so familiar with them that I cannot remember when I first heard of or read them. I have known the stories all my life, and they have affected my writing more than any other story I read as a child. No ‘children’s book’ was more meaningful than The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. Those works inspired my writing, the way I thought and saw things, the way I imagined, and dreamed. It was only until I was older that I began to see it. Those were good books that inspired me as a child. And I was fortunate that I had wise parents who knew the effects of books, and kept me from the bad ones. As I have grown older, I have encountered more good books that broaden my imagination. And I have encountered the bad ones, too, and it was the bad ones that made me realize that all stories give a kind of inspiration to their readers, but not all stories give the same kind of inspiration.

Good Ones

Good stories give inspiration because they are role models. If I am inspired by a good story, I want to write the way that story was written, to see the way I saw that story, to plant vivid pictures in the minds of my readers, just as that story did for me.

Bad Ones

Bad stories give inspiration because they are so far from what I want them to be that they make all the more clear the path I wish to take. They give me an ‘enemy’ to write against. The bad stories that I read do not discourage me from writing, they inspire me to write good books, books that share the truth, that do not compromise. They remind me of the impact that a book has on young people, and give me renewed determination to impact people in the right way.

Those In Between

Then there are the stories that are good, but not quite good enough. They have a feeling of something missing in them, or they start out good and end with a disappointment. Those stories inspire me to write books that fill that missing space. They inspire me to write what I want to read.

Conclusion

All stories, both good and bad, give a different kind of inspiration to writers, and can affect their writing in many different ways. What are some stories, both good and bad, that have affected you in your writing, and have inspired you to write the way you do?

As always, keep writing, keep learning, and keep growing.