Beryl Singleton Bissell, whose Backstory we featured on Friday, is the author of the critically acclaimed The Scent of God. We asked her about the books that have most influenced her writing life. She graciously wrote us the following:
I am a huge lover of books and have many favorites, but for inspiration the following have had the greatest impact on my life as a writer.
In 1984, when I had just begun to think of wanting to write, I heard writer, editor, and teacher of creative writing Brenda Ueland interviewed on public radio. Her beloved If You Want to Write, first published in the early 30s, was being released in a second edition. Ueland believed that "Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say." I wanted this book. Ueland's writing brims with warmth and wondrously simple, profoundly helpful stories and advice. If ever there was a book fashioned to encourage and mentor a writer, "So You Want To Write" is that book.
Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life by Philip Simmons is the one book I'd want with me should I ever become shipwrecked on a desert island. Simmons was 35 years old when he was told that he had ALS. Knowing he had only a few years to live, he began a spiritual journey into the wonder and mystery hidden within the simple happenings of daily life. I have read and reread this book innumerable times, always finding there blessing that inspires my own life and writing.
Finch Nobles, the heroine of A Gracious Plenty by Sheri Reynolds, has been badly burned in an accident. She lives next to a remote cemetery in a small Southern town and encounters there people whom she did not know while alive but who become her constant and wondrously surprising neighbors. Not usually drawn to books featuring paranormal experiences, I found this book "at once fantastic and palpably real." Perhaps someday I'll be courageous enough as a writer to take such a leap into fiction.
Mark Salzman's Lying Awake stunned me when I read it for the first time. In this exquisite miniature of a novel, Salzman tells the story of a visionary nun as she confronts a devastating choice. This book is so beautifully written and so true to the essence of religious life, so filled with empathy and understanding, that I find it a small miracle in itself. Oh, to write like this I think as I struggle to find the right words and stories.
While at a writing retreat for women, I encountered Ann Patchett's Bel Canto. Surrounded by towering white spruce trees and with Lake Superior crashing against the ledgerock, I sat in the sun and began to read and didn't stop until I'd finished the book. By that time it was night and I was seated before a roaring fire in the retreat's lodge - a far distant location from the small Latin American country where music becomes the primary language and both terrorists and hostages are revealed as wondrously human. This book not only held me spellbound, but has passages so rich and sensual that I want to plunge my hands into them.
