Ray Bradbury

I just finished reading Ray Bradbury’s brilliant little book Zen in the Art of Writing.  Brilliant and yes, prosaic too. As in so much of his work he turns the complex and difficult into the simple and understandable.  The he turns around and makes the seemingly simple and boring, artistic and beautiful.  

Clearly that mixture was much like the man himself. He points out that he was born to be a writer, but it was is in the doing that he became a writer , and it was in the doing that he lived.  From reading the book, which like much of his longer works is a collection of essays, it is clear that he could and would have turned his hand to many other kinds of work had he not made a living as a writer. But, and I believe this is important for us writers, he would have still cranked out his 1,000 words a day.  That was where he lived and who he was.

Ray Bradbury decided to be a writer very early. At age 11 he  began writing those 1,000 words a day. This was his genius. He was an amazingly honest, humble genius of a writer who would say that his genius was his diligence. Who knows?  How many know so young and go to their writing so young and so diligently and never stop?

By his own estimate he had written well over a million words when he had his first  publication at the grand old age of 18. The story was called “Pendulum.” He wrote it with Henry Hasse and it was published in “Super Science Stories.” Yet, he believed it was nothing special.

Four years of writing later, at 22 he wrote “The Lake.”  He believed that it was his first really fine story. This may sound quite early in life to write wonderfully, but as he points out it was after ten years of writing a 1,000 words a day. It was soon published, and later it was re-printed dozens of times.  It was also, he believed, the last one he wrote for some time that worked that well.

He said that at this point he was just beginning to learn to get out of his own way so the writing could happen. For years he got up every Monday morning and dashed off a short story. (He may well be the last of the writer’s who earned a living with the short story and its spin offs.) Then on Tuesday he would revise the draft. He would revise again on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday.  When the week was over the story had been written and he had re-written 4 separate times. Then it was done and he submitted it, somewhere.

I won’t try to list them here, but go to Wikipedia and check out his list of published works. Novels, short stories, anthologies, plays, screenplays. There were lot and lots of each. Looking at super rough numbers based on his own estimate of a thousand words a day it takes three years to write a million words. Thus, in a 60 plus year career he wrote something like 20,000,000 words.

​As to his writing process Bradbury wrote “I tried to teach my writing friends that there are two arts: number one, getting a thing done; and then, the second great art is learning how to cut so you don’t kill it or hurt it in any way. When you start out as a writer, you hate that job, but now that I am older it’s turned into a wonderful game and I love the challenge. Just as much as writing the original, because it’s a challenge.  It’s an intellectual challenge to get a scalpel and cut the patient without killing.”

Bradbury believed that to be a writer you must  find the courage to face the poetry of your own truth. This rings true for me. It is a bit of a mouthful, admittedly, but for me it rings very true.  The pounding practicality of my childhood years on a Kansas farm were both a wonderful way to grow up, and the reason why I never really wrote, except quietly for myself.

As a boy of 11 or so, I remember setting up a writing spot. It was the old family typewriter and a bit of paper on a card table. I sat down and wrote part of an story.  I was very proud of it, but hadn’t said anything to anyone. A few nights later we had friends visiting, and for some reason the mother wandered into my room and noticed my writing table. I remember feeling proud and a little scared as she asked if she could read what I had written.  My own mother, whom I adored, had not asked and had shown no interest. I later heard my friend’s mother say to my mother “He must be so talented. This is very early for someone to start writing.” My mother’s practical voice came through quietly, but loud and clear “Oh, he’ll get over it.” And I did. For years I quietly hid anything I wrote, and most of it just lived in the stories that I “wrote” in my head as I rode the tractor in the fields.  I hadn’t yet found the courage to face the poetry of my own truth. 

That was years ago, decades, and the pain is still fresh.  And the wondering “What if…”

So, was Zen in the Art of Writing a good book and worth the reading?  Damn straight. I wish I had read it once a month when I was in my teens and early twenties.

Bradbury leads one away from the proficient and the technical, and back to the magical. Words are magic. They were for him and they are for me.  They are a way to capture the feeling of the moment and to nurture it and grow it and live it. That magic is critical in fiction, but very much against the dry belief of academia I believe it is just as important in non-fiction. If that nonfiction is to have any impact. The emotion of that magic reminds me of something that Tony Robbins said: “Emotion is energy in motion.” Emotion is the motive power, the energy of our lives. 

This is why the great science fiction of the past spawned so many of the great scientists of the present. It taught a generation of thinking young people to dream, and when combined with action, thinking and dreaming are unstoppable.

But what about tools, what did I learn from this book that was an important tool?

First the obvious thing, the one that every great writer talks about diligence, get the words down. Bradbury had a goal of a 1,000 words a day.  Stephen King writes all morning and tries to get six good pages done. When on a project Hemingway wrote every morning as soon as first light hit. Leo Tolstoy said “I must write each day so as not to get out of the routine.” Mark Twain wrote from breakfast to an early evening meal at 5.  And, Asimov of course is rumored to have never stopped writing. So, clearly one must write.

Bradbury clearly agrees. If you want to be a writer, write.  Write a lot.  Write all the time. He challenges writers to write 50 short stories or essays every year.  One every week. He says that no one can write 50 bad stories a year, and pretty soon the number of good ones will start adding up.  So, the classic advice appears again. Diligence.

Bradbury also had an interesting method of seeking ideas and inspiration.  He made lists of words and short phrases that “spoke” to him. They elicited feelings and memories of events past or things important. He kept these lists for years, mulling them over from time to time and then when the moment was right these saved words turned into stories and essays. This was his way of creating his own writing prompts, so he never lacked something that would “speak to him.”

Bottom line on this book.  It is an excellent tonic for the writer, young or old, beginner or seasoned pro. It is a quick read and Bradbury will help you remember and rebuild the joy of writing.