Day 10: Who are the authors who have inspired your work?

So I’m 10 days into the 30 day blogging challenge from Writing.com and here’s another difficult question.

I always find this one hard to answer, because I’ve been influenced by different writers at different times. I guess you could say that we are influenced by everything we’ve ever read…

Therefore I’ll start with the earliest influences I remember, which was the Enid Blyton books.

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People often criticise these, but for a working class girl, they were miles away from the world I knew. They were adventure, mystery, new places, magic and I had nearly all the Famous Five and Secret Seven books. I have wonderful memories of The Magic Faraway Tree and The Enchanted Forest. There was wishing chairs, whirlpools, secret clubs, tomboys, cousins, pet dogs, naughty girls at boarding school. 

I blame Enid Blyton for some of the old-fashioned language like `amongst’  that wanders into my vocabulary, words which I certainly did not pick up from the world around me. Yet I don’t think it was a bad thing for a girl from the North of England to pick up some of the traditional English language from an early age. It certainly helped my English.

I still remember having to look up or ask about the words I didn’t understand. Most of the time I would look at the words around it and guess what they meant by the context.

Eventually, lack of space for my books led me to hand over my beloved Enid Blyton books to my nephews. Most of my childhood books are now in their care.

There is one children’s book that I couldn’t part with. A book of stories for eight-year-olds that my sister bought me for my sixth birthday. It’s full of fables and myths from all over the world and holds one of the most influencial stories of my childhood: Queen Scheherazade (written in my book as Shaharazad), a tale from the Arabian Nights about a young female who saves the day by telling stories. I won’t spoil it for you how she does this, but it’s a very interesting tale, one which was recently televised, much to my surprise.

Many more writer’s have influenced me put I think I’ll have to save them for later posts as they probably deserve more than just a passing mention.

Related articles

• The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton – review (guardian.co.uk)
• Enid Blyton charity ‘to close because of cheque downfall’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Naughty Amelia Jane by Enid Blyton (woodleighschoolnewspaper.wordpress.com)
• The Magic Faraway Tree Stories – my thoughts (doctorwhofan98.wordpress.com)