author inspiration

Sometimes I liken my little space on the Interwebz to a secluded corner that seldom ever find. So today I am going to Actually Attempt Socialization and do a link-up with Sky and the writers of this week's A Novel Idea post. {I've participated in a similar tag once or twice before, and hope to join in more in the future! See my Beautiful People posts here and here.}

Now, for this week's question:

Who is an author (or two or three) you aspire to write like? What is it you admire about their work or their writing style? Are there any similarities between you and your writing role model(s)?

This question is difficult to answer, because I feel like I am significantly lacking in my knowledge of truly great authors. I don't read as much as I'd like, but here are the authors that are both my inspirations and aspirations:

Jonathan Safran Foer. I have only read his Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close novel once, but I remember curling up in a chair with it in Barnes & Noble my freshman year of college, and being amazed. Foer breaks boundaries in the way he writes, completely tearing apart the structure of the ordinary novel. There are multiple narrations, sentence fragments, odd formatting, typographic art, pictures. His work is rich, and dramatic, and real. When I get the chance, I want to read his first novel, Everything is Illuminated. He's a peach.

J.K. Rowling. Because she has such a vast imagination. I want to harness the people and places I see in my own mind and spit them up onto paper like she does, creating a world that feels so real you could touch it. I also love that she writes in third person. I wrote my novel in first person for so long, but her choice to write in third influenced me to switch over. #converted

Any author who can write short, succinct prose. I feel like I tend to babble, crafting really long and arduous sentences in my novel, even more burdensome than this one. People who can pack a punch with a short sentence are my ultimate envy. Maybe one day!

+ Well, that's a wrap! But what about you? Who is your writing role model? Also, do you fancy the new blog design? We're expanding to two columns up in this place, yo. Tell me that's not progress.