The books of Terry and Clive

It seemed like the obvious choice at the time - if I was I going to be any kind of writer, was I going to be a Clive Barker or a Terry Pratchett?

I'd had plenty of favourite authors (even if some of them turned out not to be real), but when I was high on the teenage years, the two authors with the absolute biggest influence on my adolescent brain and still forming personality were Barker and Pratchett

Both writers carved out phenomenal careers with the power of their imaginations, writing books that looked like the same thing everyone else was doing on the surface, but had strange depths of complexity, horror and satire.

They both showed me that it was okay to be weird, and that it was always worth keeping an open mind.  Barker told me that monsters had feeling too, and that the worlds of fiction you let into your life doesn't have any kind of limits. Pratchett taught me not to trust authority, and to make fun of it as much as possible, as long as you've got good jokes.

And when I'm 16, they're both exactly the kind of writer I want to me. I wanted to be imaginative and moody like Clive, and funny and sharp like Terry. Which kind of writer would I be?

It didn't take me long to figure out that the answer, of course, was to be both. Because if they showed me anything, it was that is what your own voice that mattered. 

And while I've never really sought huge success with my writing, I've got innumerable pleasure out of trying to find out exactly what my voice was and following in their footsteps that way. Isn't that what it's all about?

(Later on, I just tried to be Grant Morrison, which was a bad idea for all concerned. Tune in every Sunday to see the embarrassing results of that.)