"I'm looking for things to steal."

The story is that American artist, Jasper Johns, was roaming around a MOMA Matisse exhibition one day. Someone approached him to ask what he was doing there, and he replied, "I'm looking for things to steal."

I know what he means. I'm feeling the creative-klepto urge myself.

There's no shame in swiping ideas and inspiration from others. Or I hope not, because I have a well documented history of doing so. The first short story I wrote was inspired by the film, Lost in Translation. My second novel, Plum Blossoms in Paris, leeched some of Before Sunrise's romantic spirit, while its title also contains a reference to a recently discovered Matisse painting. Whether I like it or not, surfing consistent swells of fresh, innovative ideas is not my strength as a writer. I know which emotions I want to capture and share with readers, but the skeleton supporting that flesh and blood is all too often a mystery of scattered, buried bones. I need some leads.

And perhaps the focus and discipline required for nailing down that structure, and riding the long wave that is a novel, has escaped me a little since I started blogging. I love writing vignettes and poems, but let's face it: this is a short-attention span medium, and a fairly addictive one due to the wonderful give and take with all of you. If an idea finds me now, I'm usually satisfied with my attempt to shine it into a small, stand-alone pearl, instead of stringing the longer necklace (wow, I seriously need to lay off the metaphors...). The truth is that I don't really feel like a novelist anymore. Even with a book coming out next year.

I want to find that commitment again. I'd like to have the total, sustained consumption that only a novel can bring. To fall asleep with beloved characters talking to me.

But first I need to dig them up. They're still buried somewhere. And so I find myself watching more films, hunting for more obscure things to read online, listening more closely to song lyrics, and roaming around some virtual MOMA's. The hunger is there, which is good. But so is the fear that it just won't happen again.

So yeah...I'm looking for things to steal. Great things. While trying not to hear the infernal clock ticking behind my shoulder.

After all, I wrote this post talking about a new novel over a year ago.

--

Note: I have no proof that Johns' untitled work on the right was inspired by the Matisse cutout on the left. I just saw them, and made a connection.

Grave Rubbings (Meme Time)

I run my fingers
over the coil
of your words,
hoping the rubbing
I take will
plunge deeper
than paper
to smudge the blood
of this heart
with the ink on
our soul

---

Karen, at Keeping Secrets, was kind enough to tag me for this 25 Most Influential meme. I found the task rewarding, if difficult, as I can't really say how much these writers have influenced my own work. It's difficult for me to chart a straight line between Dostoevsky and myself (what, you don't see it, either??). And yet I remember reading Crime and Punishment in college and being floored by its acute psychological depiction of a man's tortured internal struggle. That novel lingered with me, while others floated away. And so I take it more on instinct than direct proof that Fyodor Dostoevsky belongs on my list.

Others' influences are more obvious, or equally as obtuse. But this is the list as I saw it, in roughly chronological order of my discovery of these brilliant writers. I've also included my favorite work in parenthesis, just for overkill.

1. L.M. Montgomery (the Emily series)
2. Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
3. Jane Austen (Persuasion)
4. Victor Hugo (Les Miserables)
5. Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence)
6. Edgar Allen Poe (The Raven)
7. Henry James (The Portrait of a Lady)
8. Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
9. Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
10. Walt Whitman (Song of Myself)
11. Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)
12. E.M. Forster (A Room With A View)
13. Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient)
14. Anne Tyler (Breathing Lessons)
15. Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day)
16. Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections)
17. Milan Kundera (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)
18. E.E. Cummings (somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond)
19. W. Somerset Maugham (The Razor's Edge)
20. Jhumpa Lahiri (The Interpreter of Maladies)
21. Ian McEwan (On Chesil Beach)
22. Colette (The Vagabond)
23. Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
24. J.K. Rowling (the Harry Potter series)

And for my final entry, I'll cheat a little and say:

25. You

Because all of our supportive interactions, and your fine examples, have helped shape my writing and feed my daily inspiration. So thank you. :)

I will now challenge three more writers to share their influences. Vesper, Jennifer, and David -- I'm calling you out!

Cobwebs

Sarah, Grade 4

Indulge me, please. It's my birthday.

A time for looking back. And feeding the future.

So here's a window into my past. I wrote this little gem when I was ten. Try not to laugh (or yawn).

Once upon a time there was a girl named Shannon. She lived in a very big palace, but was not happy, because she could not marry the one boy she loved, Dusty. One day she sighed and said to herself, "I want to marry Dusty soooo much. I wish father would let me. Mother might let me, but father's opinion counts the most." Then, Shannon suddenly got a terrific idea that she would run a way! She grabbed a suitcase, and then packed in a hurry. She sneacked quietly down the stairs and ran out of the palace.

I know. Dusty. Soooo lame.

Names aside, I was happy to discover this fragment while rifling through old papers yesterday. Maybe this is overstating it, but it represents some kind of continuum to me, some kind of song from my youth that still reverberates today. So rare.

I never had that writing fever in my blood from an early age. I didn't spin wild tales for my friends (and yes, plot is still a weakness). I couldn't even keep a diary for more than a week without growing bored. My imagination grew mossy and fertile in books, yes. But I never thought I'd be writing them.

And yet here is a short piece I took the trouble to type, on my own. Not for school. Not for my parents. But simply because I wanted to tell a story.

And even if that story is slight and generic, I can recognize my present self in its lines. Maybe you can, too. There's something strangely grounding and comforting about that. So much about that girl in the photo is unrecognizable to me now. But there are these cobwebs connecting us.

As for what happened to Shannon and Dusty...who knows? Life is an open road. And I never want to reach The End.

I am a Parasitic Writer

I am a flea...a tapeworm...a leech...that greenish bacteria flourishing in your intestines.

I absorb nutrition from bigger mortals. I am dependent on them for growth. I have a difficult time detaching myself from my hosts, for fear I might shrink away to nothing.

I am a parasitic writer.

It's not like I set out to be a parasite. It just sort of happened that way. I attached myself to Michael Ondaatje for awhile, and the hunger to write silvery, lyrical prose became too overwhelming to resist. Once I had drained him of inspiration, I moved on to Anne Tyler, and suddenly the words became less important than feasting on the rich, authentic characters presented to me. Nearly sated, I dipped into a lean, tender fable of Alessandro Baricco, and dropped all my adjectives and adverbs, like they were fussy, extra calories.

Sadly, I somehow picked them up along the way.

Hey, blame Ian McEwan. Prick.

As you might suppose, I feel a certain amount of guilt for fastening myself to others for so long. And I have a very flea-like desire to rationalize my sorry existence. So here goes...

I'm fat and satisfied. I'm working on different projects that reflect a variety of inspirations. I love all of my disparate influences. And I haven't killed a host yet.

Don't get me wrong. I don't really want to ape other writers' styles or characters. But neither do I have a problem with an author's work serving as an alarm clock that rattles awake new insights and new ideas within me. Those insights and ideas were always there, if slumbering. It's just that sometimes I need a really loud alarm clock to get my butt moving.

But then...watch me jump.