Perhaps my previous post was not clear enough in its intentions. Instead of portraying myself as a writer full of self loathing, I was hoping to spark a conversation about which writers invited us (you, me, them) to start writing.

For me, it was Vonnegut. But his work was just that–an invitation to pick up a pencil. Now, I return to his work to remind myself of why I started. But rarely do I find myself inspired keep writing. When I’m “blocked” or lacking proper motivation to create, I turn to two books: Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son and Richard Russo’s The Whore’s Child (I obviously like possessive nouns and references to Catholicism). There’s something about these two books–the messiness of Johnson and the tightness of Russo–that grease my gears.

So, in an attempt to beef up my bookshelf and possibly add to my well (is that what they call it, the well?), my question to you all is this: who (or what) invited you to write and who (or what) inspires you to keep writing?

I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, but writing feels like a miserable chore lately. Even these blog posts take way too long to write, and I never like the finished product. I say this not to solicit pity, but simply to state a fact: I am not having fun anymore.

All this self doubt has me thinking about why I started writing in the first place–and why (or how) I should continue.

Unlike some writers I know, who, at the age of nine, knew they would be a writer, I didn’t decide to write; I was given permission.

I read a lot as a child–mostly comics, Choose Your Own Adventure, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators (which is really just the Hardy Boys + 1)–before graduating on to more, ahem, adult stuff: Critchon, King, etc. And eventually the Pennsylvania public school system did its part by introducing me to Shakespeare (the Mel Gibson version), William Golding (the 1963 version), and F. Scott Fitzgerald (the Redford version). But never, in all those years of reading, did I think to myself, “Hey, I can (or should) do this.” I drew penises in the margins of my notebook and called it a day.
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