The Biggest Influences to my Writing

Whether I’m living up to them is another question

A writing journey is a fluid thing. I seem to be this amalgamation of everything I have ever loved or admired and that places my writing into these eras stemming from one big influence. In this post, I outline each era and how I was slowly molded into the writer I am today.

(2010) A Green Sticker

I’ve talked about this moment before, but one of the biggest influences to starting my writing journey was a green star sticker I received for writing the best short story in the class. My story was called the Golden Butterfly, about a young woman who was transported one day to a mysterious island and follows a golden butterfly to escape. This sticker marks the moment that I thought I had finally found something I was good at.

(2013) The Raven Cycle – Maggie Stiefvater

I still consider this to be one of the biggest influences to my writing of all time. I read The Raven Cycle when I was about eleven years old and it absolutely blew my mind. This book was the first I remember that gave me the feeling the characters lived and breathed on the page, and I fought to recreate it in my own writing.

I also started to explore more speculative elements, like paranormal-esq magic and dark threads within my family-friendly adventures. This is when I started writing what I called ‘dark urban fantasies’ and that would continue for just over half a decade.

I owe just about my entire writing journey to Maggie Stiefvater. On that note…

(2015) Scorpio Races – Also by Maggie Stiefvater

While Raven Cycle is beautiful in many aspects, Scorpio Races takes it to a whole new level. I consider this to be mmm perhaps one of the best books ever written—and Stiefvater also considers it her magnum opus. From this point, I tried to capture that kind of writing (that I now know is called upmarket fiction).

(2020) Film School

This is obviously the other biggest influence to my writing. I even say that film school taught me how to write a novel—it taught me how to plan one, how to make characters, how to build a world, how to follow a plot.

My writing progressed rapidly over the two years I was in film school moreso than it had probably ever before. If you want to learn how to write something with commercial appeal, take a screenwriting class.

The one thing that film school did to my writing that was negative was that I got very focused on plot and character and hitting the beats, and fell out of practice writing the upmarket prose I was aiming for from The Scorpio Races.

(2022) Dropping out of film school… and Maggie Stiefvater (again)

All good (and bad) things must come to an end. When I decided I didn’t want to pursue film as a career, I got stuck for several months on what I did want to do. One night, I was talking to an old childhood friend, and re-remembered that Stiefvater had a blog I used to adore. I went looking for it, and found her post “Writing the Story I was Always Meant to”

Very suddenly, I realized that all I had ever really wanted to do was write, and I decided this was my chance to make that happen. I chose to transfer into communications that same night.

(2023) The Hazel Wood – Melissa Albert

Hazel Wood felt like a book that was written just for me. Mother daughter relationship + dark fantasy/magic + eerie speculative elements? I have never felt so seen by a book since The Raven Cycle. Not only did I love it, but it has some beautiful prose, and felt like everything I wanted my writing to be that I had forgotten.

Unfortunately, around this time I fell off the wagon of improving my writing and didn’t come back until…

(2025) Failing at Querying

And then…

(2025) Summer Sons – Lee Mandelo

I read this book in my efforts to both learn more about how books got their genres, as well as recognize upmarket fiction writing when I saw it. I was back to actively trying to improve my writing, and also my understanding of market. This is where I was introduced to gothic fiction and absolutely fell in love with it. Up until this point, I had always said I was more of a ‘dark urban fantasy’ writer, but most people didn’t really know what that meant, and anyway, my writing always featured some sort of paranormal-esq element. Once I fit it more snugly into ‘gothic’, I feel like it found its place better.

From this point on, I stopped trying to query my old book and started reading and writing exclusively gothic.

(2025) Ray Bradbury and Shirley Jackson

Both authors I read for the first time in high school, but came back to in my self-education of gothic lit and fell in love with both. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is now one of my favourite books of all time. Also, please see my favourite Ray Bradbury quote:

“’Who?’

The boy I once was, thought Halloway, who runs like the leaves down the sidewalk autumn nights. But he couldn’t say that. So he drank, eyes shut, listening to hear if that thing inside turned over again, rustling in the deep bones that were stacked for burning but never burned.”

- Something Wicked This Way Comes

(Present)

Nowadays I’m still working on my gothic novel, still reading and trying to learn from the classics, and still, in many ways, looking for the next big thing that throws me closer to the path I’m meant to be on. My writing journey is far from over, so maybe one day I'll get to make a part 2 to this post... and it'll include stuff like, got on the new york times bestseller list of course ;)