The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#246) -- What Changed?

When was it that you realized your early inspirations no longer held sway over you, when that childhood book just didn't hit you the same way anymore? What changed?

For me, this moment occurred when I looked back over some of my early stories and found that they were the work of  different writer than the one I had become in the years between writing them and  re-discovering them. My early work tended to be inspired more by the allegories of C.S. Lewis, and I was was working in a Christian bookstore at the time trying to get a job as an editor for a Southern Baptist Convention, I  wrote what I knew. And what I knew was the stories within the Christian subculture of Frank Peretti and Randy Alcorn, so that's what I wrote, only with a sci-fi slant.

However, a few years later (even while working for the SBC) I found I had become a different kind of writer. I no longer felt compelled to write to the choir (so to speak) or to write for any evangelistic or allegorical motive. I simply wanted to tell stories.

Because I was who I was, certain values would come through those tales, but gone were the days of writing with an foreordained agenda.

I still love to read C.S. Lewis -- don't get me wrong -- but I'm not looking to write that kind of story anymore, nor do I believe that's my calling.