Spelled The Way It Sounds

navalenigma asked: Silver and green

Silver: My top three inspirations, poetically, at the moment, are Rita Dove (specifically her book Thomas and Beulah, which does exactly what I want to do with arced lyric storytelling poems), Rumi (for short powerful truths and long thoughtful celebrations), and Sylvia Plath (for a kind of ruthless brutality.) 

Prose-wise it’s a little harder to say; Diane Duane certainly, for the way she writes about good and evil, and the way evil can be both fought and redeemed, and the idea that people are people, no matter how many eyes or legs or brains they have. Neil Gaiman, because he makes me laugh and think and re-read over and over. 

And finally J. Because her John and Seb are so brilliant, and she lends an extra fire under my ass to think about mine, and about the Moran family. 

Green: I haven’t consciously imitated styles for a long time, actually? I’ve mimicked Gaiman, certainly, and a number of poets (most amusingly Shel Silverstein and whoever wrote Averse to Beasts) during the course of my year-long senior thesis (did I ever mention I wrote 40-odd poems for a senior thesis?), but otherwise it’s not something I do much. Does striving to imitate the writers of Sherlock in order to make my characters sound right in fanfiction count?