Your inspiration as a writer?

Hello everyone!
This is merely a thread made for myself and others to see what other writers really inspire YOU.
From rap artists to authors, who is the one person you really like, and for what reason may that be? Has this person written a magnificent poem and did you just think that you'd love to be an aspiring writer like that person as well?

As for myself, the two people that really made me want to start writing are: Mos Def (Rap artist) and Edgar Allen Poe.
Mos Def has always been my favorite rapper. Ever since he started out in '94, he's been ahead of time with his lyrics. The wordplays, the rhymes, every song he wrote is brilliant in its own way. Usually when I'm not feeling too well, I play some of his songs and enjoy the geniality.

In the spoiler you'll find lyrics to the second verse from Mathematics. One of his most brilliant releases, if you ask me.


As for Edgar.. Well, my dad bought me a book packed with most of his commercial releases for my tenth birthday. Both poems and short stories. At that time I couldn't really comprehend most of the things Edgar Poe described in his writings, but as I got older, I did. And now Poe's definitely one of my favorite writers. The Raven has been an inspiration to many of my old poems, and is definitely my favorite poem of all time. No doubt, honestly.

For those of you who haven't heard one of the most popular answers (thought of by someone else) to Lewis Carrol's riddle "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"


I'm looking forward to read your replies!
Have a great day :)

I wouldn't say that any one or two writers influence me. I don't follow any authors, rather I just pick up books that seem interesting to me. However, books by Lois Lowry such as "The Giver" always seem to have me hooked, so I guess you could call him my favorite author. It's just when authors create new worlds that could possibly be living with our own such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games that really get me inspired. It makes me want to create those worlds that only seem an inch away. Not that I would want to live in The Hunger Games, but hopefully you get what I mean.

It's more of a concept, an idea, that inspires me, rather than specific authors.

When I was just starting to change my writing style, I spent a lot of time studying the works of Margret Weis and Tracy Hickman. They, along with a group of other people, created the DragonLance series, a fantasy book series that currently spans 190 books. I wanted to create worlds that full of history with such believable characters that my stories were also that real and had enough material to explore further if I so wished.

They also helped me figure out how to get a better control on my writing when it comes to description about surroundings and characters' feelings and thoughts. I spent more time in high school working my way through a copy of the Annotated Chronicles, highlighting passages and pouring over their notes on the text, than I did on any actual schoolwork.

There were others, but it was definitely Weis and Hickman's work that marked the beginning of a change in my writing.

Well, in terms of inspiration I have countless writers that inspire me. If I were to list them all we would all probably become quite bored.

There are, however, a few writers who have influenced me to both start writing, and admittedly had an effect on my style. Namely; Anthony Bourdain, Rod Serling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Shakespeare, Tina Fey, and Agatha Christie.

For song writing, Elvis Costello, Robert Frost, Pete Wentz, and Freddie Mercury have all had an influence, amount others.