This blog is mostly about influences on my writing.  So I talk about the Blues and anime and movies and tough characters and all that kind of stuff.  But something I don't talk about often is the other major influence on my writing, the most important influence any writer has — Life.

My life, like any life that's lasted forty years or so, has had plenty of crazy twists and turns.  Amazing people have come in and out of my life.  Some people I would love to cross paths with again — for good times remembered and for apologies I still owe.  Others I'm happy to never set eyes on — some of these out of anger, some out of shame.

And all those relationships, some that lasted years and some that lasted only a day, they all blend into me, they shape me, and as a result, they are my writing.  More than skill, more than hard work, these people and the experiences I had with them make my writing unique.  This is the real thing that separates one writer from another.  This is why a novel by Stuart Jaffe is uniquely different from one by Stephen King.  He and I have a lifetime's worth of different relationships that formed who we are and how we see the world.  When we think of stories and sit down to write them, the details we pick out, the words we choose to express ourselves, the motivations we give our characters, even the plot devices we employ, are all filtered through the lives we've lived.  That's what really makes the difference.

Writing itself is a skill that can be learned from practice.  But the rest of it is truly created from one's life.

Think about Henry Miller for a moment.  Tropic of Cancer could never have been written by, say, Ernest Hemingway.  The two men led such different lives (though they probably both consumed equal amounts of alcohol), knew such vastly different people, and so, neither could ever have come up with the story of the other.  Henry Miller trying to write Hills Like White Elephants would be a travesty.  Heck, Miller couldn't conceive of such a story let alone write it.  He'd be more interested in what led to those two having sex and the act itself rather than the aftermath.  And Hemingway trying to write Tropic of Cancer?  For all his bluster, he'd never be able to do more than hint (in some sparse but poignant declarative sentences) at the physical nature of those relationships.

Why?  Because both men went in and out of different relationships that shaped them.  And I don't mean just romantic relationships.  I'm talking family, friendships, even a work relationship — the type of boss a person has or co-workers.

Every single person we encounter, every moment we breathe, we change who we are.  It is the reason the books I write today are utterly foreign when compared to my writing from a decade ago.  Life has changed me, and so it has changed my writing. This is the ultimate influence on our writing, the one that we can never escape.