On Writing

"When people ask me where I get my ideas, I laugh. How strange—we are so busy looking out, to find ways and means, we forget to look in."
-RB

A writer’s philosophy, in his own words.

Bradbury advocated a daily dose of writing as a cure against the ills and sorrows of everyday life, a tonic that has the potential to energize all that we experience. 

In the essays collected for his 1990 book Zen in the Art of Writing, and in lectures given throughout his life, he shared the beneficial power of the written word.

For the act of writing need not be treated as a chore, nor should it be the domain of only a chosen group.

Read on—and write away—with Bradbury’s voice as your guide. May his insights into the value of writing carry you through a sentence, a paragraph, and perhaps even a short story, but, more important, on through your life beyond the page.

Let there be words, many of them!

"I believe that eventually quantity will make for quality. . . . Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can quality come."

Getting Started:

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Start short.

Don’t start out writing novels—they take too long—“write a hell of a lot of short stories,” he said. Give yourself time to improve; with each week and month, you’ll see your stories improve. He claims that it simply isn’t possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

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‍Just type any old thing that comes into your head.

‍He recommended “word association” to break down any creative blockages, since “you don’t know what’s in you until you test it.”

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‍List ten things you love, and ten things you hate.

Then write about the former, and “kill” the later—also by writing about them. Do the same with your fears.

Build a life around writing:

Live in the library

Step away from your computer and expose yourself to new books often. There are numerous worlds to discover beyond your screen.

Read—a lot—but select wisely

Bradbury’s recommended well-rounded bedtime reading: one short story, one poem (especially Pope, Shakespeare, and Frost), and one essay. Of course, not just any essays. They should come from a diversity of fields, including archaeology, zoology, biology, philosophy, politics, and literature.

Examine “quality” short stories

He suggested reading works by Roald Dahl, Guy de Maupassant, Nigel Kneale, and John Collier. Turn to stories with metaphors; the more, the better in his opinion!

Write with Joy

Writing is not a serious business.

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If a story starts to feel like work, scrap it and start one that doesn’t.

Do not . . . turn away from what you are—the material within you which makes you individual, and therefore indispensable to others.

Learn from the greats, but be you. Learn from your favorite writers, versus imitating them. Bradbury initially imitated H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, and L. Frank Baum before developing his own unique style.

Life Beyond the Page

Develop a strong support system

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Fall in love with movies. Preferably old ones.

Do you have friends who make fun of your writerly ambitions? Bradbury’s advice: 'Fire them' without delay.

The goal is just one person to come up and tell you, '“I love you for what you do." Or, failing that, you’re looking for someone to come up and tell you, “You’re not nuts like people say."

write with urgency

Fahrenheit 451 began with a bag of dimes.

Ray Bradbury wrote the first version of Fahrenheit 451 in the basement of UCLA’s Powell Library, where he found a room of rental typewriters charging 10 cents for every half hour. He took in a bag of dimes and, nine days later, had spent $9.80 writing what he later called “a dime novel".

For a writer who imagined the future so vividly, Bradbury kept his own tools simple: paper, libraries and the typewriter. He later said he did not use a computer because he could write faster on a typewriter.

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