Agent Questions: Which writer has most influenced you?

As I continue to search for an agent, one thing is clear: they all want something different. That’s why it’s important to read the submission guidelines on their websites and customize each query. A few want just a query letter, although most want a query letter and a certain number of pages or chapters. Others also ask for specific information about the author. While some of these questions are straight-forward, others are perplexing. I’m going to spend the next three weeks looking at questions from one agent’s online form, starting with “Which writer has most influenced you?”

Many writers have inspired me, and I can’t pick out the one with the most influence. But saying that wouldn’t answer the question, so I put down Lucy Maud Montgomery, who wrote Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon, and dozens of other books.

Here are just a few of the many authors and books that I loved as a child:

·       Louisa May Alcott, with favorites including Little Women, Rose in Bloom, and An Old-Fashioned Girl;

·       Laura Ingalls Wilder’s entire Little House series;

·       Mary Norton’s Borrowers series;

·       A series of childhood biographies that I called “blue true books” because of they had blue cloth covers at the time (now branded as “Childhood of Famous Americans”); and

·       Alice Turner Curtis’ Little Maid books (e.g., Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony). My mother owned them as a girl, and I found them in my grandparents’ storage room.

During junior high and my first two years of high school, I read George Elliot, Grace Livingston Hill, and Charles Dickens as I curled up on the couch on our enclosed back porch. Then we moved, and my reading tastes went with me, supplemented by Ellery Queen and Rex Stout. Later, I discovered Agatha Christie, Jane Austin, and C.S. Lewis.

But who influenced me most?

It’s anybody’s guess.