I guess there is one story which was strictly influenced by a trilogy, but I dreamed part of that too. Mostly my stories are a mixture of all the things I read, see, and experience, and there’s not necessarily one that can be identified.

I recently read Shriver’s Post-Birthday World, and that was awesome too.

OMG, I didn’t know they were making a movie out of KEVIN.

It’s partly a reversal of my early writing habits. For a long, long time I intentionally patterned my writing after various beloved authors or books. Parroting them was my way of learning how to do that funny thing you do when you write. It made it easier to turn the stuff in my head into stuff on paper if I could borrow other writers’ voices and styles to do it with.

But mostly it’s because of my fear of writing a book that sounds like a poorer version of someone else’s. I worry that people will see another book reflected in mine and think I was just copying them, and probably that I did a bad job of it, too.

So, I try to avoid any obvious influences. At least, any that are obvious to me, which is a tenuous assessment at the best of times.

~Mary

By the way, I just read and loved How To Ditch Your Fairy.