Writing Under the Influence, by John Ostrander
Nothing is created in a vacuum. Though the artist may like to think that the work springs forth Zeus-like full blown from their brow, the truth is any number of different other works influence your own. The works that move and affect us as artists also teach and guide us in our own expression.
We prize originality but it is said there’s only x amount of plots when you boil them all down (the number has varied according to who is defining it, but it’s usually low) and they were all created by the Greeks. The greatest writer in the English language – William Shakespeare – rarely came up with original plots, most usually re-working older plays or tales from history. What is original often is how you combine the elements.
Imitation is the starting point for what you eventually become. In writing, you become influenced by certain writers because of the types of stories they tell, or their command of language, or the depth of their themes and thought or even just their success or all of it together. It is through imitation, I think, that we truly learn such things as structure. With writing, you can take all the classes and read all the books but, ultimately, you really only learn how to write by writing. Hopefully, as you grow older and wiser – better – you discard the overt forms that you imitate to find your own voice, your own style. What starts out as something that you borrow has to become something that you own.
GrimJack began that way. As a writer, I very much fall into the camp of wanting to write because of the pleasure I’ve had in reading, especially certain writers. I’ve noted elsewhere that GrimJack was created as a cross between hard-boiled detectives and sword-and-sorcery heroes (making him what I sometimes laughingly refer to as a “hard-boiled barbarian”) but I haven’t talked about which sword-and-sorcery heroes went into the mix. Some might assume Robert E. Howard’s Conan but I’ve always been more drawn to Solomon Kane, Howard’s Puritan wanderer/adventurer. Conan as a character isn’t very reflective; Kane was, even though he was driven by a wanderlust that he couldn’t explain. (more…)
If you’re a Doctor Who fan given to long drives half-way across the continent (well, hey, I am), here’s a way to pass the time that’s a lot more entertaining that counting cars on the New Jersey turnpike.
After a successful pilot was aired at the end of last year, the second Doctor Who spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures, will begin airing in England the end of this month.
Yesterday in Japan, which I believe is today here, the Hugo Awards (which some of us jokingly refer to as the Eisners of science fiction) were handed out in the first-ever Asian-based World Con, 
Patrick Stewart, aka Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek : The Next Generation, is teaming up with David Tennant, aka the 10th Doctor of Doctor Who, in The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet. Tennant has the lead, Stewart does Claudius, and tickets will go faster than a Beatles reunion after Yoko drops dead.
So a bunch of us Mixologists were having dinner in a suburb of Chicago having what EIC Gold claims are the best hamburgers in the world (pretty good, but that’s another post) and we started talking about who looks down on whom — Doctor Who fans looking down on Dark Shadows fans, who in turn look down on Forever Knight fans, and so on — and I mentioned that the Geek Hierarchy already existed. Multiple Michaels Davis, Gold, and Raub were all disbelieving that such a hierarchy existed, let alone that it had standing.
Okay, I’ll get this over with real fast. Sci-Fi Channel’s new Flash Gordon show really sucks. I sat through the 90-minute pilot, and I sat through the next episode. No more. Life is too short.
creator Alex Raymond is not in the opening credits. Hell, he got better (far better) treatment in that campy movie from 1980. Say what you will about that movie, compared to this waste of time that movie was [[[Citizen Kane in Outer Space]]].
