Five Brillant Pieces Of Writing Advice From Ray Bradbury
What a master of the craft has to say about the art of writing
Ray Bradbury was one of the most prolific and talented authors in speculative fiction history.
He also was incredibly generous in doling out writing advice. In fact, he even wrote the book “Zen and the Art of Writing.”
Between that and numerous interviews he gave on the subject, there is a plethora of advice to discover.
Read Three Things Every Day
The idea that writers need to be readers is not new. In fact, almost every interview I have read with an author, bestselling or not, says something along the lines of “read broadly and often.” But Bradbury takes it even further and prescribed specifics to this advice:
“… I’ll give you a program to follow every night, very simple program. For the next thousand nights, before you go to bed every night, read one short story. That’ll take you ten minutes, 15 minutes. Okay, then read one poem a night from the vast history of poetry. Stay away from most modern poems. It’s crap. It’s not poetry! It’s not poetry. Now if you want to kid yourself and write lines that look like poems, go ahead and do it, but you’ll go nowhere. Read the great poets, go back and read Shakespeare, read Alexander Pope, read Robert Frost. But one poem a night, one short story a night, one essay a night, for the next 1,000 nights. From various fields: archaeology, zoology, biology, all the great philosophers of time, comparing them. Read the essays of Aldous Huxley, read Lauren Eisley, great anthropologist… I want you to read essays in every field. On politics, analyzing literature, pick your own. But that means that every night then, before you go to bed, you’re stuffing your head with one poem, one short story, one essay…”
— Ray Bradbury, “Telling the Truth.”
One of the most things inspiring about this advice is the idea that it encourages you to read broadly outside “your” genre.
If you struggle to fit reading into your life, this also gives you a built-in time to read. Go to bed 30 minutes or an hour early. Take that time to improve not only your writing but your life, as well.
Study the Masters of the Craft
Connected to the previous advice is the idea of studying other writers:
“I used to study Eudora Welty. She has the remarkable ability to give you atmosphere, character and motion in a single line. In one line! You must study these things to be a good writer.”
— Ray Bradbury, The Paris Review.
Yes, stay abreast with the conventions and trends within your chosen niche, but there also is much to learn from authors who have mastered certain techniques, even if they are writing in other genres.
Do you love beautiful literary prose but want to write science fiction? Read literary fiction and bring that style over, much like Ursula K. Le Guin did.
Writing Requires Work
One of the hardest things about being a writer is actually doing the writing. It’s easy to let yourself get caught up in the reading and talking about writing.
Bradbury has advice for that, too:
“I have three rules to live by. One, get your work done. If that doesn’t work, shut up and drink your gin. And when all else fails, run like hell!”
— Ray Bradbury, The Paris Review.
Ultimately, to be a writer, you have to get your work done. And that means actually sitting down and writing.
Write with Gusto
Writing is hard. It can lead us to a crippling fear that we allow to take over and suck the joy out of our writing.
“…if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don’t even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is — excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms.”
— Ray Bradbury, Zen and the Art of Writing
It’s important to remember that most of us started writing because it was something we loved.
We can’t allow anything to take away that joy.
Only One Thing Makes You a Failure
Lots of writers feel like failures sometimes.
You didn’t meet your goal. You received another rejection. Your critique partner had issues with your work.
These things all add up, and the cherry on top is that we are all our own worst critics.
We internalize the negative things we think about ourselves, and then each fresh wound makes us spiral down a trail of our own inadequacies.
But according to Bradbury’s law, there is only one way to fail.
“There is no failure unless one stops.” — Ray Bradbury
Time and again, Bradbury says it’s OK if you are writing crap.
Practice is its own reward. It’s making you better.
It’s OK if the writing isn’t good enough yet; each new story, each new revision is helping you to become a stronger writer. It’s helping you to find your voice and, when you do, you can take the world by storm.
I’ll leave you with this last bit of advice from the master:
“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.” — Ray Bradbury
