Have you ever read a book which touched something inside you that should be buried deep enough to be beyond reach. A book that left you seeing everything around you differently because it has exposed an inner depth you didn't know you held. Then, horrors of horrors you understand you will never ever be able to set words to paper that will make another human feel the way that book has made you feel.
I have just finished reading DH Lawrence, Women in Love.
I don't think I'm ever going to recover from it.
Alan Bennett's autobiographical work affects me like no other. I am able to re-read this writing over and over - looking for clues really. Two big tomes of his are Untold Stories and Writing Home. Also, Slipstream - Elizabeth Jane Howard's autobio, had an unexpected affect too. Strangely though I have never felt the urge to read any of her novels.
More than one book has stayed with me quite profoundly. two have been non classifiable crossovers between fiction and non fiction.
Promise At Dawn, Romain Gary
The Story of San Michele, Axel Munthe
A colossal work of fiction, re-telling the story of MacBeth is King Hereafter, Dorothy Dunnett.
Someone pressed a copy of The Lovely Bones into my hands. She said it had had a profound affect on her and that I must read it. I did and saw exactly what she meant. I actually think my whole slant on the world changed in the reading of that book. But far from thinking I could never write like that, I was desparate to see if I could do that to a reader. Could I make a reader question everything they believed about life and death? Could I show them the family situation in a whole new light? Could I challenge they way they treated people everyday? This is what excites me about writing every day.
I haven't read Women In Love and, having read a description of the plot, I now won't until my own novel is finished as there seems to be a similarity of storyline and I don't want my ending influenced. But I will say there have been moments when I have doubted my talent. My position leads me to self-doubt easily and I've needed a lot of bolstering from my friends to get me this far. I suppose what I'm saying is, you can't know that you will write a book to rival DH Lawrence and you'd be a fool to try. But if you have any talent at all there will be something your words can reveal in a reader, perhaps something DH Lawrence could never have done. I think you absolutely mustn't try to do what others have done before you. The world you create for the reader and its purpose must be entirely of your own doing, your own thought and should be provoked by others as little as possible. DH Lawrence spent a great deal of his life in exile and did exactly that.
There are incredible writers out there whose work mine could never rival, but at the same time, I truly believe I've written something no one else could match either. There is no first place here. The winner is the one who sails over their mountains of self-doubt, carving out their very own untrodden path and lighting the eyes of those in their wake.
Comparison is futile.