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)
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