Writing Through the Eyes of Myself

As I continue to think more and more about Everything is a Remix, Sponsors of Literacy, and All Writing is Autobiography I've begun to consider what factors have influenced me in my writing. My interest in writing my own books has been part of me for as long as I can remember. When I was in preschool I used to write books in crayon about a boy and the monster who used to live under his bed. I considered some of the adventurers I used to write them into, they included bullying, playing soccer poorly, and dealing with the fact that a monster lived with him. Two of three of these situations I experienced regularly as a child, I used my own writing to comprehend my own problems, the monster represented the voice of reason in the child's ear encouraging him and helping him through hard situations. The monster was the sponsors I had in my life encouraging me which I these stories.

As I grew up a little more the books I attempted to write matured as I did, many of the characters I wrote about were orphans and that often interested me. I myself am not an orphan and I come from a loving family but I must have gotten that implanted in me somehow from somewhere. I think it came from sponsors of my prior reading experiences, Harry Potter was my favorite book series as a child and that must have influenced me into the writing of my own stories. All of my characters are, in someway, ostracized from society they are different and trying to fit into the world around them. I sometimes felt like that as a child, when I moved to a new school in first grade I had no one and really struggled to make friends, at times it was really hard. I also noticed a pattern begin to emerge within my characters. They were all skilled at cracking jokes and witty banter, two skills I like to think I excel at. The more I developed my own characters the more saw our personality traits aligning, or at least the personality traits that I wanted to portray the most. Those characters expressed different sides of me with their experiences following similar paths to my own, they were in some part autobiographical. The more I write the more I see mirrors between my characters and the characters I used to read about. Every time I write I am just remixing Harry Potter or Percy Jackson or some combination of both. I don't think there is any problem with me taking influence from these characters because they were the heroes that inspired me and the authors that inspired me to write. My characters are a mixture of everything I have ever read and enjoyed with my own personal spin and energy added in. The characters I wrote about as a kid were both a remix of the sponsors that came before me and an autobiographical retelling of my own life's events, thoughts, and emotions. Now I just wish that I could ever finish writing one of those books to see how those characters turned out.

Sincerely,

Cam