Stories That Write Themselves
Lessons from “Zen in the Art of Writing” by Ray Bradbury
I first met Ray Bradbury in an English comprehension passage excerpted from Fahrenheit 451. Before that I’d experienced the ability to do my best work while fully absorbed, with mental chatter muted. If you’ve experienced flow, you’ll know what I mean. I’ve long been curious to learn more about that meditation-like state which is “the zone,” More recently, I was thrilled to learn that Bradbury had written a guide with “zen” in the title.
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury (HarperVoyager, 2015) is a compilation of short pieces about the craft. It includes the introductions to works such as Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, essays, an interview, and some poems. I highly recommend this book to writers seeking motivation. In sharing how his work was created, Bradbury gives writing advice. Following is a digest of the main takeaways.
Write 52 short stories a year
Bradbury shares what worked for him, noting that quality is born of quantity. That being so, you should write between 1000 and 2000 words per day (for the next 20 years), thereby producing one short story per week. If most of them are bad, so much the better — because you can learn even more from what goes badly than from what goes…
