If you haven’t read Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, add it to your list. Immediately. The book is chalked full of advice, of course, but, more than that, it bursts at the seams with Bradbury’s passion for writing. More often than not, I closed the book in the middle of a chapter to go write. The book taught me and propelled me straight into good ole-fashioned writing practice. It’s rare to find a book so adept at both.
As I read this book, I annotated. I used to be extremely anti-writing-in-books, too scared to sully the pages with my own thoughts, but college filleted my hesitation right out of me. Needing to reference so many specific pages for discussions and seminars led me to cut out the middleman and take notes right on the page. Not only was the process quicker, I found I liked it.
In fact, I love it.: taking notes, adding my own experiences as marginalia. It adds intrigue to a re-read and it makes it quicker for me to find the passages I found memorable. It also makes my books mine in a new way. No longer are they simple communications of thought, they become conversations between the author and I, me and I, and anyone who borrows my books.
And I annotated the heck out of Zen in the Art of Writing. Of course, this meant it took me even longer to get through the book, but when I finally did get through, I had plenty of gold to go back to and digest time and time again.
Here are three of my favorites:
“If your reader feels the sun on his flesh, the wind fluttering his shirt sleeves, half your fight is won. The most improbable tales can be made believable, if your reader, through his senses, feels certain that he stands at the middle of events. He cannot refuse, then, to participate. The logic of events always gives way to the logic of the senses,” (Chapter: How to Keep and Feed A Muse, 38).
Description. I cannot say it enough. Description, description, description. Grounding the story in specific details is not only entertaining, it is useful. As Bradbury points out, tactical details will grab the reader and pull them in even if other elements are struggling.
When I re-read old work of mine, I see this advice to be glaringly true. Description is still an area I work on, but when I started writing, I had almost none of it. What I did have was convoluted and redundant. It made my scenes flat or overly complex, often both at once.
Over time, I have worked on my description. It’s still an area that needs my focus, but I’ve found more of my footing. Grounding scenes in details of the senses (what is visible in the scene, what is heard, what is smelled, etc.) adds a richness that inherently pulls the reader in. They are at the whim of the next line and the one after because their mind has latched on. The mind can’t help it. It knows details. It knows senses. It’s what keeps us safe in real life, it is what memories are made of. It is the way we experience the world. To ground your work with descriptions invites the reader right in and paves a clear path for the rest of what you have to say.
Work on developing skill in vivid descriptions and every aspect of your work strengthens.
“Be certain of this: When honest love speaks, when true admiration begins, when excitement rises, when hate curls like smoke, you need never doubt that creativity will stay with you for a lifetime,” (Chapter: How to Keep and Feed A Muse, 43). Additionally: “A well-fed man keeps and calmly gives forth his infinitesimal portion of eternity. It sounds big in the summer night. And it is, as it always was down the ages, when there was a man with something to tell, and ones, quiet and wise, to listen,” (Chapter: How to Keep and Feed A Muse, 45).
Each of these two quotes speaks to a point Bradbury hits throughout the book: write from a place of truth and you can never be lost.
Experiencing life, knowing love and hate and sorrow and boredom, are all fuel for creativity. Grief, anger, jealousy, humility. Pride. Confusion. Overwhelm. Pity. Gratitude. When one writes one’s truth from this place, there is no limit to what to say. There truly is no end to the inspiration to be found in the daily act of feeling.
I love the bit: “A well-fed man keeps and calmly gives forth his infinitesimal portion of eternity”. UGH, so good! Infinitesimal portion of eternity? Are you kidding me? SO GOOD.
Not only is is an excellent string of words, I love the point he is making. My life, my experiences, are vast. Endlessly vast. An eternity all its own, yet, hardly a blip of a fraction in the greater eternity of existence. I am everything at the same time I am nothing. LOVE IT (also can’t think about it too hard to I get existential. You know how it is).
But I love the ownership he gives to our experiences with those words. What I experience is mine just like what you experience is yours. Truly yours. Claim it!
Bradbury encourages us to live; soak up what you see, let it simmer, and you will always have something to say. And, when you have taken the time to truly know what you want to say, there will always be someone who will listen.
“Dandelion Wine, like most of my books and stories, was a surprise. I began to learn the nature of such surprises, thank God, when I was fairly young as a writer. Before that, like every beginner, I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies,” (Chapter: Just this Side of Byzantium: Dandelion Wine, 70).
I used to think writing is about telling the story you want to tell. I no longer quite think that.
Yes, we all have things we want to write about or things we want to read about, but once you craft the bones of a story, they begin to take on a life of their own and we must learn to follow it. As writers, we must bring forth many of the elements of a story (character, plot, setting, etc.) but a writer’s intuition feeds the story more than the mind every will.
Eventually, characters sit up off the page and begin saying things you did not plan on. Their words leap from your fingers and it is all you can do get them down. It takes a practiced hand to let them go, to follow and see what they do rather than wrestle them into submission.
Craft the story, think on it, work on it, but, ultimately, let it run. Let it go where it needs to go. Listen to it because it is in charge, not you. Fighting it will bring strife to you and problems to your work. Take what you learn about craft and structure and offer it to your characters with supplicating hands. More often than not, they will take it from you, but they will RUN with it and you must do your best to keep up.
Anyone looking for a little direction, a little advice, and a little inspiration should pick up Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing. There was not a single time I sat down to read where I was not compelled by Bradbury to put his book down and pick up my own. Give his words a read, see what you learn, and let me know what stuck out to you.
