I have discovered the writing inspiration book that I can identify with, finally! Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You. Not a how-to book. It’s a collection of essays about writing, and it’s completely fabulous. This is a huge relief to me, because I seem to have started out my reading of writing inspiration books at the other end of the spectrum, with Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. I ended up with a sort of nice review of it on my third attempt, but frankly, I didn’t identify at all with her writing experience. But Bradbury’s book – yes, yes, yes!
Did you ever read something that made you feel like you were part of a much bigger picture, that someone understood you, that you were on the right track? Something that made you want to run and jump and yell and do everything you were meant to do? That’s the effect Bradbury’s essays had on me. I’m not usually one who reads a book twice, but this book will be read repeatedly and I predict the generous application of highlighter and margin notes. Perhaps even some memorization.
So, some quotes that meant a lot to me:
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. For writing allows just the proper recipes of truth, life, reality as you are able to eat, drink, and digest without hyperventilating and flopping like a dead fish in your bed. - from the prologue, Zen in the Art of Writing
From The Joy of Writing (this entire essay is amazing):
Zest. Gusto. … if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer’s make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto.
If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer…. You don’t even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is – excited.
From Run Fast, Stand Still…
The story wrote itself in a few hours.
From Drunk, and In Charge of a Bicycle:
But it is easy to doubt yourself, because you look around at a community of notions held by other writers, other intellectuals, and they make you blush with guilt. Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.
But, you see, my stories have led me through my life. They shout, I follow. They run up and bite me on the leg – I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go, and runs off.
Bradbury makes me want to toss aside other writing books for awhile and just write. Write, and be excited, and love every second of it, and create, and then say, “Look what I made! Look!” There is something wonderful about the passion of it, the frenzied artistry when the subconscious mind takes over and words are pouring through your fingers and onto the screen and you’re watching, on the edge of your seat, waiting to find out what happens next – because you don’t know, not any more than if you were reading someone else’s story for the first time. That feeling is immense and fulfilling and makes one drunk on writing. Bradbury reminded me how wonderful it is, and made me feel like I’m in good company for experiencing writing in such a way. Finally, after reading a dozen books on writing, I’ve found The One. Thank you, Ray Bradbury.
Update from last week: I decided to revise in sections, divided my manuscript into twelve segments that each lead up to a major scene, and now I’m going through each of those segments over and over again as I revise for different things. For example: 1. segment 1 for character 1; 2. segment 1 for character 2; 3. segment 1 for character 3; 4. segment 1 for clarity of theme; 5. segment 1 for foreshadowing; etc. I’m just starting segment 2 today, and while it will be a long revision, it seems more manageable now that I have a plan for the whole process.