08-10-2016, 11:35 AM
I don't think this is answering your actual question about culture. But as to the "everything has already been done" ... I liked his answer "we'll have to find new ways to paint it again," it's so positive. It reminds me of something a friend said to me when I was moaning about that very same thing. She said, "Maybe it's all been said before, but it's never been said by you." 
And as for the culture discussion. I know that the way I think and the way I phrase things is directly a result of the combined factors of books I've read and my mother's strange and sprawling but enthusiastic way of exclaiming over everything. I can actually hear the echo of their influence when I write, could almost point to the place on the page "I said that like my mother ... I used that word or thought because of Bronte or Dickens ..." I know that's not exactly the "culture" you mean, but my world is very small. Even so, I don't know where my own voice ends and the echo begins. Probably still didn't answer your question ... sorry. Blarg.
I think what I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's a matter of "hinder" or "help" so much as culture is one of the threads of your voice, you can't really change it. You can add to it if you want different colors in your tapestry, or to make a different picture, but you can't pull out the threads once they're there without pulling the whole thing to pieces. It is what it is. Your culture from country all the way down to weird family members, are woven into your speech and writing patterns and habits for better or worse. They make you unique, they give you the very thing that will help you NOT be the next cliche. I love the old ways of Europe. I would climb inside a British cup of tea and live there if i could. But if everyone in the world sounded exactly like William Shakespeare, as unfathomably perfect as he was ... well, it wouldn't be good. I sound like me, and you sound like you, and that's your fingerprint in words, unique in all the world.
Anyway. I still don't think I answered the question. But ... that's all I've got.
And as for the culture discussion. I know that the way I think and the way I phrase things is directly a result of the combined factors of books I've read and my mother's strange and sprawling but enthusiastic way of exclaiming over everything. I can actually hear the echo of their influence when I write, could almost point to the place on the page "I said that like my mother ... I used that word or thought because of Bronte or Dickens ..." I know that's not exactly the "culture" you mean, but my world is very small. Even so, I don't know where my own voice ends and the echo begins. Probably still didn't answer your question ... sorry. Blarg.
I think what I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's a matter of "hinder" or "help" so much as culture is one of the threads of your voice, you can't really change it. You can add to it if you want different colors in your tapestry, or to make a different picture, but you can't pull out the threads once they're there without pulling the whole thing to pieces. It is what it is. Your culture from country all the way down to weird family members, are woven into your speech and writing patterns and habits for better or worse. They make you unique, they give you the very thing that will help you NOT be the next cliche. I love the old ways of Europe. I would climb inside a British cup of tea and live there if i could. But if everyone in the world sounded exactly like William Shakespeare, as unfathomably perfect as he was ... well, it wouldn't be good. I sound like me, and you sound like you, and that's your fingerprint in words, unique in all the world.
Anyway. I still don't think I answered the question. But ... that's all I've got.
The Soufflé isn’t the soufflé; the soufflé is the recipe. --Clara