re: the sleep thing: I remember hearing once about a sleep study where they basically put a bunch of people in a place with constant lighting (i.e. no dimming or brightening to correspond with different parts of day) and observed what sleep cycle they developed. Turns out, without any particular light cues to react to, humans gravitate toward a 25-hour sleep schedule—so they'd naturally go to bed at 8pm one day, then 9pm the next, etc etc. Interesting stuff.
Anyway, influences. I have no idea how much these stories or works or whatnot have influenced my writing. But if you asked me for some of my favorite things ever at different points in my life, it'd be...
David Clement-Davies: Fire Bringer and The Sight (I'm actually afraid to go back and reread these now because what if they are not as awesome as I thought they were when I was twelve)
Chrono Cross
Ursula K. Le Guin (esp. the Earthsea Trilogy)
Princess Mononoke
Heart of Darkness (I always feel really awkward mentioning this one, actually, since that whole racism thing is pretty problematic—but I can't deny that I found Conrad's prose hypnotic and entrancing as I was reading)
Mark Twain, esp. The Adventures of Huck Finn (which would've been a damn near perfect novel if he hadn't had Tom Sawyer show up for the last quarter, ugh) and his later/depressing works—i.e. The Mysterious Stranger, The War Prayer, etc
...but I can't tell if there's any major trend in this list or not. Hell, half of them I'm not even sure why I liked them so much. Like, Chrono Cross. The plot is okay but not fabulous, it goes into batshit nonsensical JRPG plot territory for the last dungeon and a half, the cast was too damn large to have proper character development... but there was something about the archipelago setting/bright island colors/ocean motif/celtic-y music that was just entrancing to me, and the whole of the Dead Sea dungeon was chilling and excellent in the best of ways, and I thought Kidd was perfect and fabulous and there were some really lovely subplots... yeah, I just don't know.
When I've thought about this question lately, I think I've slowly come to suspect that your own life experience is the biggest source of story-material. This shows up less in my fanfic than it does in my origfic, but I've slowly started picking out the themes/stories I return to. Someone living away from what they consider home is one; it always vaguely annoys me when I read a fantasy epic where teenage kids leave home and never seem to think about home again, or miss it. Home matters to me. (I thought I only started caring about this once I left home three years ago, but I was surprised to rediscover half of a novel I'd written in middle school where one of the main characters left home, and missed it, and that was a major side-plot.)
The stories we've loved doubtless teach us a lot about the mechanics/technical aspects of the craft: no one will teach you how to write better, crisper dialogue than Twain. But the content, the stories you want to tell, perhaps needs to come from a different place.
no subject
Anyway, influences. I have no idea how much these stories or works or whatnot have influenced my writing. But if you asked me for some of my favorite things ever at different points in my life, it'd be...
...but I can't tell if there's any major trend in this list or not. Hell, half of them I'm not even sure why I liked them so much. Like, Chrono Cross. The plot is okay but not fabulous, it goes into batshit nonsensical JRPG plot territory for the last dungeon and a half, the cast was too damn large to have proper character development... but there was something about the archipelago setting/bright island colors/ocean motif/celtic-y music that was just entrancing to me, and the whole of the Dead Sea dungeon was chilling and excellent in the best of ways, and I thought Kidd was perfect and fabulous and there were some really lovely subplots... yeah, I just don't know.
When I've thought about this question lately, I think I've slowly come to suspect that your own life experience is the biggest source of story-material. This shows up less in my fanfic than it does in my origfic, but I've slowly started picking out the themes/stories I return to. Someone living away from what they consider home is one; it always vaguely annoys me when I read a fantasy epic where teenage kids leave home and never seem to think about home again, or miss it. Home matters to me. (I thought I only started caring about this once I left home three years ago, but I was surprised to rediscover half of a novel I'd written in middle school where one of the main characters left home, and missed it, and that was a major side-plot.)
The stories we've loved doubtless teach us a lot about the mechanics/technical aspects of the craft: no one will teach you how to write better, crisper dialogue than Twain. But the content, the stories you want to tell, perhaps needs to come from a different place.