![\"\"](\"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/bradburyzen.jpg\" "\\"bradburyzen\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nFor many years I read one book on writing every year. This was something I did in January or so. I would find a book that looked good and read it, marking lots of things in the book with pencil. I don’t do that every year now as instead I spend more time actually writing instead of reading about writing. Those years of reading about writing were not wasted; I learned a lot and put it to practice.<\/p>\n
I recently stumbled on a small book by Rad Bradbury (his official page<\/a> and a page in Wikipedia<\/a>) on writing. I really like that book. As you can see, reading the book caused me to do a little research on Bradbury. I was not surprised to learn that he wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote – he claims to have written about three million words before someone published his words and paid him for them. He also did not go to college – too poor in the Great Depression – but instead educated himself at the library.<\/p>\n Some notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n Word association – write nouns that mean something to you, combine them, start writing about a combination. Somewhere on the second page or so a real story will probably appear.<\/p>\n Find something that scared you to death. There are great stories in that.<\/p>\n Find an old nightmare.<\/p>\n Find something you did for which you have not forgiven yourself.<\/p>\n Read relentlessly. Any type of writing about any subject.<\/p>\n “One constant remains: the search, the finding, the admiration, the love, the honest response to materials at hand, no matter how shabby they one day seem, when looked back on.”<\/p>\n “Since then, I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas.”<\/p>\n Write one short story a week for at least ten years.<\/p>\n He wrote Fahrenheit 451<\/em> in the basement of the UCLA library renting typewriters at ten cents a half hour.<\/p>\n Word association – “I simply got out of bed each morning, walked to my desk, and put down any word or series of words that happened along in my head.”<\/p>\n “If you can find the right metaphor, the right image, and put it in a scene, it can replace four pages of dialogue.”<\/p>\n Now I am off<\/strong> to find a book written by a Dorothea Brande in 1934 called Becoming a Writer<\/em>. I suppose I will read at least two books on writing this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Dwayne Phillips Some notes from Ray Bradbury’s “Zen in the Art of Writing.” For many years I read one book on writing every year. This was something I did in January or so. I would find a book that looked good and read it, marking lots of things in the book with pencil. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[128],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":726,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions\/726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}