On my last post I commented on how I was unintentionally and indirectly influencing my daughter with my writing. Without knowing it, I had been providing her with a dream to one day become a writer herself. What a wonderful gift! Then a few days later I started thinking about who influences me indirectly and unintentionally.

I’m sure the first thing that comes to your mind when the question “Who Influences You?” is asked are gobs of writers and people you admire. We all write about them in our biographies and list them on our facebook pages. But when I ask that question, I’m asking about everybody BUT those individuals. Who in your real everyday (in my case uninteresting and filled with children’s screaming and never ending driving around) influences you without intending to, and often without you even noticing?

I say this because I realized my husband, although I may not necessarily want it, has often influenced who or what I am writing about. But let me point out the key phrase in this sentence “although I may not necessarily want it.” Have I confused you yet? Perfect!

Sometimes we let the wrong influence show in our writing. Where most influence by our heroes and favorite writers can be beneficial, sometimes the unintentional and indirect influence can be bad.

I love my husband (99% of the time) and he is absolutely wonderful (99.5% of the time) but his ideas about my writing … not so wonderful. Unfortunately I’m not interested in adding an evil plot for my character to take over the world and it had not once crossed my mind to put in group of ninjas in my 10th chapter just to bring in some “action”. Still … after he said it … I briefly considered it. GASP!

It doesn’t matter who it is or what they are suggesting, sometimes I can’t help but wonder if I need to bring in every little idea that people suggest. Our friends, our family, our critique groups all have their own ideas about where our books should go. And I don’t know about you, but often times I feel the need to please them all.

There’s one word to answer that … Impossible!

Ok ok…I know you are probably saying, “Where the heck is she going with this?”

What I’m trying to say is this … be careful about who influences you, and don’t let them influence TOO much. Be true to who you are. Even though they may not realize they have influenced your decision of whether or not grandma should be wearing a red dress or a purple dress when she comes back to Susie through a dream, they have. But we need to be careful that we aren’t changing our stories to please other people, we should only change things when it makes US happy.

Bookmark This

Marybeth is an aspiring novelist currently working on her second novel. For more information visit her website www.marybethsmith.com. She also has a blog Desperately Searching for my Inner Mary Poppins where you can keep up on her moments as mother, wife and writer..

---