30-Week Blog Challenge Week 26: Admiration

I'm back with the Monday blog challenge! The lady in charge is Marie at Mom Gets Real. The questions are right here:

QUESTIONS

And Week 26's prompt is . . .

WHO DO YOU ADMIRE AND INSPIRE?

Wow, uh . . . well, first of all, "admire" is an odd word for me. I'm not a hero worship kind of person at all, and don't go starry-eyed over celebrities. But I guess the people I admire most are the ones who are doing what I would like to do, and that mostly includes successful writers.

I admire author Joan D. Vinge for writing characters with rich inner landscapes and sharp emotions. I admire Shannon Hale for her quiet and fully realized introspective characters and the consistent, magical worlds they live in. I admire Spider Robinson for the concepts of his settings and the people who populate them, and I admire K.A. Applegate for finding a way to make a ridiculous-sounding premise into a blow-your-mind character-centric story of war. I admire Lemony Snicket for always finding a way to tell a horrifically sad story in a hilarious way, and I admire Octavia E. Butler for her multifaceted perspectives and ability to make aliens relatable without making them human. I admire Diane Duane for building child wizards believably in a complex wizarding community long before Harry Potter, and I can't say enough good things about the magical realism of Neil Gaiman. Eoin Colfer's ability to execute intricate plots through characters who still have heart is beyond admirable, and Jerry Spinelli can write children's minds like you wouldn't believe. I admire and adore all these authors for not only showing me how to write, but for being an example of why I would want to.

As for who I inspire, that's a hard question. I can't answer it easily without sounding braggy, so I will be vague. I receive messages nearly every day thanking me for my activism outreach projects, and some of them are effusive--they practically bubble over with gratitude in their messages, thanking me for helping them learn that they aren't broken and leading them to realize they have hope, and these letters are sorely needed sometimes because I also deal with a lot of hatred and harassment over my message. Some of my critique partners and writer friends have also been grateful for my assistance and leadership, which is gratifying and sort of humbling. And some time ago, a friend who shall remain nameless told me I inspired him because I'm actually chasing my dream and not giving up, so he knows I'm going to get it.

There's a lot of give and take in my little universe. I feel like I have a healthy balance of supporting and being supported. And I know how lucky I am.