I picked up Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing last week after coming across a quote from it on tumblr. It’s a quick read and I would recommend it to any Ray Bradbury fans or writerly-type people lacking motivation. The overwhelming message of the book is that writers should be excited to write, because writing should be fun.
I have been scanning through the journals and collected letters of different writers, thinking a lot about the people who do the work I really admire. Sometimes I feel so distracted by the drama of my own feelings that I don’t know how to put that aside and write someone else’s story. Ray Bradbury’s point is that you shouldn’t put any of that aside; you should bring to the table all of your loves and hates, and let them inform your writing.
He let the love he had for writing push him to write a lot. Something like 1,000 words a day forever, which he thought was an essential part of getting to the point where you can write without thinking–explode, fly apart, disintegrate!
I have been working on fiction again this Summer, and I was doing really well for a while and wrote this chapter I’d been stuck on for years (no exaggeration–actual years), but then I got stuck again or just distracted, and one day passed where I didn’t write any fiction and then another day and then it had been nine days.
The rest of the quote is, “The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, reading your story, will catch fire too?” Saturday, I put off finishing Zen in the Art of Writing, and went to the library to put its advice to use. I reminded myself that I was still only on the first draft, so I tried to ignore my doubts and just get something on the page. And I did! Really quickly! And it was a lot of fun!
Right, fun! I know that’s why I do this, but I sometimes I forget.
Other favorite quotes from the book:
“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?”
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
“From now on I hope always to stay alert, to educate myself as best I can. But, lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out.”
“He thought books could cure everything. We all think that at a certain time in our lives–don’t we?–when we discover books. We think in an emergency all you’ve got to do is open the Bible or Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson, and we think, “Wow! They know all the secrets.”
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Sometimes I have trouble with remembering the first draft *is* supposed to be the most fun, less thinking. But as a perfectionist, I want to be great NOW, thus I forget how to have fun. Thanks for the reminder.
This makes me want to write more fiction. I don’t have any grand ideas, just small ones that are a little derivative. Stories set in someone else’s universe. Maybe that’s better than not writing at all?
That is something that I want to emulate as well. While I write on my blog occasionally, I’d like to actually write stories. But I don’t do it…sigh. Laziness strikes again.
You found Ray!
So it was FUN to do the work, relax and don’t think. Now find your Mr Electrico and wake up every morning and run to your word processor and write a thousand words before breakfast. Then you can do what you want the rest of the day. You have to love writing to be that dedicated and keep that child inside alive.He was.
Its great to find motivation unexpectedly.
Let your fingers follow your subconscious and do the typing. Wish it really was that simple. I’m going back to work, work, work.I need to find my footprints.
Groetjes
I’ll have to mark this as to read, because it all feels like advice I could use. I’m the worst about remembering that the first draft is supposed to the fun one. There is nothing and everything wrong with wanting my writing to be amazing immediately, and I often get lost in that.
The first draft is fun.
The first draft is fun.
The first draft is fun.
(Really. It is.)
Lor
I think I was the only kid in class who actually liked Animal Farm and Fahrenheit 451. Zen is something I’ve been wanting to read for a while now. Something that always stuck with me, and I think it was a quote from that book, was when Ray said if you were to read his thoughts out on a transcript it would sound like a book. That he thought in action, “I moved to the counter to order the flowers.” That’s something that stuck with me since eighth grade Honors English, and began to find myself thinking that way all the time, and still do.
i’ve been reading pretty much any and every book about writing i can get my hands on. definitely adding this to the list! i want writing to be fun, too!