Bradbury Can Write, But He Doesn't Know Zen

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	• Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity Ray Bradbury Joshua Odell Editions, 1994 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 21 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Soul Transfusion

This book is like getting a transfusion. Not of blood, but of Ray Bradbury's enthusiasm. His motto was "Exactly one-half terror, one-half exhilaration." Well, this book takes out the terror of writing, and leaves us with pure exhilaration.

Even if you are not a writer, you may want to get this book just for Bradbury's zest.

This book is a tight tapestry of several ideas. It is part autobiographical, with the story of him ripping up his Buck Rodger's comics because his friends (like Job's friends) mocked him. Later he ripped up his friends as he stood strong for his conations and returned to his true bliss.

Bradbury also retells the story of his meeting Mr. Electrico at the carnival. Besides being the basis of "The Illustrated Man" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes," this meeting with the carne was Bradbury's equivalent of First Communion. He was never the same afterwards.

He also has some "nuts and bolts" tips for writers.

1. Let yourself explode. There are two types of explosions. One is the IED (improvised explosive device), where you just go to pieces. But there is also the explosion of popcorn. Be popcorn. Drop your restraints and inhibitions.

2. Write 1,000 words a day. This is not a whole lot, the equivalent of one full Amazon.com review. Trust me it works--it gets the garbage out of system. Practice makes perfect.

3. Follow a weekly regimen. Monday write. The next few days rewrite what you have written. This is crap filtration. Saturday send off the manuscript. Wash, rinse, repeat.

4. Don't think. That is, don't over think. Listen to your subconscious--that shadowy figure in the back of your heart that keeps talking to you. She tells you what is right or wrong. She's the same being who tells you things you had never thought of before. This is the muse. Without it, you cannot write.

This review cannot do justice to Ray's prose and sage advice. All I can do is whet your appetite, and hope you'll bite. The book is delicious!

ACTUNG: !!!BE SURE YOU GET THE EXPANDED VERSION!!!

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Bradbury Can Write, But He Doesn't Know Zen

I've read Bradbury's short stories, The Martian Chronicles, and Farhenheit 451 and as always, I'm interested to see what a famous author has to say about the experience of writing.

The essays in this collection tend to be repetitive with many of the same ideas propounded over and over again: word association, childhood memories, and writing a short story a week. Maybe this is what Bradbury had in mind when he said Zen in the writing -- constant, meditative, mind numbing repitition. Along with the essays on writings, he throws in some poetry, which I found lacking, wishing he'd stuck with prose.

The strongest essay in the book is the title piece, in which Bradbury discloses that he knows almost nothing about Zen Buddhism, but found some parallels in the art of writing and the practice of Zen. To fully flush out the Zen/writing connection, the books of Natalie Goldberg are excellent, particularly Writing Down the Bones.

The strength of Bradbury's essay though isn't on the comparison of writing to Zen, but on the observation that the writer yearning for commercial success and the writer yearning for acceptance in literary circles are still both yearning and that desire affects their ability to create art. I've always struggled and felt torn in my own writing between my desire for a literary masterpiece and a commercial success. Bradbury suggests that you forget about either and focus on the craft and in creating something that is uniquely you and if your talent and your work ethic are sufficient, then you may just achieve both. Bradbury, himself, has done this on occasion with his work, transcending pop science fiction culture into literary realms, which gives his argument validity.

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Great Quality!

This book was instrumental in my success in my creative writing class. Thanks for the great product!!

A Ray of Sunlight; Tapping Spirit Inside

This book is the real deal, Bradbury nails it. Call it parapfrasing what we all once knew, or tap into from time to time - but from Rainman it's a recipe, an axion, a reliable methodology! Never (almost never) have I felt connected, validated and understood at every page. Writing, like most of life and learning, is by nature. As we grow older and more analytical, and as we grow more attached to the physical world we move farther from the original spirit of our passions, as we learn, we forget. Bradnury makes it so easy to remember our dreams and live in the world that we as childrem, create for ourselves.
I bought this book and brought it into an adult writing class to show everyone. To my surprise, but not really, the teacher bought the book that same day!

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Care and feeding your Muse

This book is a wonderful collection of essays on writing by Ray Bradbury. The essays span about 20 years. They are mostly about the creative process. He provides inspirational advice on how to care for and feed your Muse. He discusses the methods that work for him. He tells us stories about how he came to write some of his more famous short stories and novels - e.g. how he was driven to tears, writing his first great short story "The Lake".

The book is probably most valuable for accomplished writers, because he assumes that the reader has already mastered the mechanics of writing and story structure. There is no discussion of plotting, character development, how to sell your work.

If the book has a fault it is that Bradbury is too talented. In the book, he tells the story of writing the first draft of Fahrenheit 451. He wrote it over a few days at a pay typewriter, a dime at a time, in a UCLA library! What works for a genius such as himself, may not work for other writers. He can sit down at a typewriter, commence a prose poem on a noun and miraculously have a story appear on the page. Most other writers do not have the natural command of storytelling. They need to work in a much more structured fashion.

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