Ray Bradbury Bullies Me From the Grave
Ray Bradbury is, as Neil Gaiman says, a writer who emerged as a “genre of one.” A giant of a writer and a creative force whose influenced spanned more than over 65 years of literature, TV, film and even music, Ray Bradbury always had this to say about the life of writer:
“You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
Now my favorite part of the above quote is the wearing of books like hats upon your crazy heads, because, let’s face it, we’ve all done it at one point or another – no? Just me? Okay, then.
But the most stressful, and resonant, part of his advice for me is to write every day. Apparently, from his teens until his death in 2012, Ray Bradbury wrote every single day of his life – sometimes churning out one short story a day. Even when the words don’t come, when the muse keeps hidden and silent in the walls, Ray Bradbury showed up day after day, sits down and writes and writes and writes.
This stresses me yet heartens me. It makes me feel, that though there are days of intense insight and story, of inspiration and transfiguration from idea to words, there are days where a writer, even an insanely gifted one like Ray, my man, needs to hunker down and force himself to write.
It makes me think, too, about how times have changed since the 1940s when Ray Bradbury’s first work to be published was recognized by a then magazine editor Truman Capote. Times were tough then -- you had to mail things and type things out and put correction fluid if you screwed up or retype the whole thing altogether. How so much thought went into it, how much effort and conscientiousness – and on top of that, he was STILL able to write every day. I got no excuse, man.
And so, I will try my very very darnest to write every single day. And no, chats and social media statuses really do not count.
Wouldn’t it be great to churn out a short story every day? Wouldn’t that be a feat – I mean, more than
wearing a book hat.
(Photo credit Pinterest)