Sunday, July 14, 2013

Zen in the Art of Writing (Take I)


Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing (1990, 1992) provides an entertaining and energetic primer for just about any interested party. It's infectious. Read a handful of pages and you come away brimming with ideas, rearing to go.

Try this one for size: "You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."  Amen to that!

Q: "What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?"

And, apropos of the Martin-Zimmerman encounter: When was the last time you were stopped by the police in your neighborhood because you like to walk, and perhaps think, at night? It happened to me just often enough that, irritated, I wrote 'The Pedestrian,' a story of a time, fifty years from now, when a man is arrested and taken off for clinical study because he insists on looking at un-televised reality, and breathing un-air-conditioned air. . . (page 6).

Finally, there's THE LIST, an unfolding group of nouns (sometimes with modifiers) -- providing a lifetime of evolving ideas . . . not unlike Twyla Tharp's "pretend you're a verb" strategy for the longterm.

Here's to staying drunk on writing. Huzzah!

Today's Rune: Fertility.   

2 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

I liked it. I'd read much of the stuff in other forms before so it didn't have as much impact, I guess as if I'd read all the pieces for the first time.

jodi said...

Erik-Hmmm, how about writing
WHILE drinking dandelion wine? Think I'll try it!