David Levithan inspires writers with inclusive works

I have never truly had an inspiration based on my career choice that I looked up to until recently.

In my years of being a writer and practicing my writing skills, I had never read stories by other writers and authors that really spoke to me or made me want to write more.

Rewinding to my freshman year of high school, I was beginning to see light to my writing, and I learned how to write better and how to acquire better stories and ideas. But what was missing was someone to guide me.

I came across a book called “How They Met and Other Stories” by David Levithan.

There are 18 short stories in the book about love and meeting first loves, and either keeping or losing them.

The book not only inspired my love for writing short stories, but it also gave me a new look on authors.

What Levithan does is write in an elegant and beautiful way that transcribes feelings of love, anger and emotion, all in his own, unique way.

Soon afterwards, I researched more books by him. I found out he is a well-known LGBTQ+ writer, and that was something at the time I had never read before because there is a scarcity of LGBTQ+ books and authors.

I was lucky to find him and read his stories. He mostly writes for young adults, but it’s entirely in the way that he writes that really helped me find a better suit for writing.

Not only does he write about LGBTQ+ youth, but he also includes different races, genders, religions and other minority categories in his writing.

Reading his stories, I looked back at my past work and cringe. The way I used to write was very childish, and not linguistic or elegant by any means. Granted, I was young when I first began writing, but it was still a bit ridiculous that I wrote the way I did.

Levithan gave me insight on how to write stories, whether they are short or long works.

He showed me ways to pick up better language that better suited the characters in my stories.

He showed me that being inclusive of every race, gender, sexual orientation and religion is imperative.

He showed me that I am allowed to find my own voice and learn my own style of writing, and he showed me that I can do great things if I change my previous ways.

“How They Met and Other Stories” was the biggest inspiration for my so far six-year, continuous project of writing stories.

I found my niche reading those stories, and I realized writing shorter pieces is my passion. Because he has 18 stories in that book, I aimed for 18 as well. While I have not progressed that far in six years, I’m still working toward that goal.

Without reading this book, I realized I would not be where I am right now, and I would not have gained a new technique of writing.

Without David Levithan, I would not be here writing these stories, and I would still be on the hunt for a role model.