RIP, Ray Bradbury
Jun. 6th, 2012 07:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jon_chaissonI have come up with a new simile to describe myself lately. It can be yours.
Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me.
After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
Now, it's your turn. Jump!
--Ray Bradbury, Preface to Zen in the Art of Writing
When I first read that preface on that slow summer day in 1994 when I was working at Brigham's Ice Cream on Cambridge Street in in Boston, something clicked. It's a simple enough passage, one that doesn't sound too impressive out of context, maybe even a little hokey...but it made sense to me.
I first read Bradbury's Dandelion Wine in Ms. Goudie's class in junior high, and it opened my eyes as a writer. I'd of course wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, taking after my Dad. Maybe not become a reporter--I didn't have an interest in that--but I wanted to play with words. I'd written all kinds of half-assed story ideas that went nowhere when I was a preteen, but it wasn't until Dandelion Wine that I understood writing. I got how he was telling the story. (I often say that Lee J. Hindle's Dragon Fall was another inspiration, but I think that particular book was more of a "hey, I can do this too!" influence.)
In that summer of 1994, I'd finally decided once and for all to stop dithering and start writing on a consistent basis. I'd toyed with writing earlier that year when I was working at the Harvard Coop store in Brookline (the makings of Two Thousand), but it wasn't until that summer when I bought that book that everything started to click. Everything started to make sense. All I needed to do was start each day with the reminder that I needed to write something. And by something, I mean anything--whatever popped into my head. If I had to start somewhere, that was it. Start at the beginning.
From the 'Run Fast, Stand Still...' essay in the same book:
...But along through those years I began to make lists of titles, to put down long lines of nouns. These lists were provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface. I was feeling my way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.
The lists ran something like this:
The Lake. The Night. The Crickets. The Ravine. The Attic. The Basement. The Trapdoor. The Baby. The Crowd. The Night Train. The Fog Horn. The Scythe. The Carnival. The Carousel. The Dwarf. The Mirror Maze. The Skeleton.
I was beginning to see a pattern in the list, in these words that I had simply flung forth on paper, trusting my subconscious to give bread, as it were, to the birds.
He then goes on to realize that, in looking over this list, he found what he truly loved and remembered and wanted to write about. It's an interesting essay on figuring out what the hell it is you want to write about in the first place.
With this passage, I also came to the conclusion that, instead of forcing the story to where I want it to go, I should engage in writing sessions where I just sit down and let it spill out with abandon, just to see where it went. With this, I began to build the story that became True Faith (and later on, The Phoenix Effect and the Bridgetown trilogy). I did a lot of world building--a LOT of world building, over the course of a few years--and focused on my fascination with underground societies, spirituality, and vigilant protectors.
Zen, and many of his other works, gave me a lot of food for thought. He was a rare author that I read not just for entertainment but also to learn from. The biggest thing I learned from him, and probably the simplest, was his pastoral voice. I was drawn in by the way he told Dandelion Wine by way of a series of images and events over the course of a summer from a young boy's point of view. He didn't try to push the story into your brain like a Michael Bay film; he let the story do it by itself like a Wim Wenders film, quietly and smoothly and without a million explosions. He wrote deceptively simple prose about exceptionally heavy ideas; that's why "It was a pleasure to burn" is still my all-time favorite opening line. Short and simple, but DAMN, it's creepy!
I got to see him at WorldCon in LA in 2006, when he spoke on a special panel and then had a brief signing session. I had him sign one of my copies of Zen in the Art of Writing, and in the brief few seconds I had with him, I said what I wanted to say: "Thank you for inspiring me to start writing when I was a kid." I didn't need to say anything else.
Thanks again, Ray.
Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me.
After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
Now, it's your turn. Jump!
--Ray Bradbury, Preface to Zen in the Art of Writing
When I first read that preface on that slow summer day in 1994 when I was working at Brigham's Ice Cream on Cambridge Street in in Boston, something clicked. It's a simple enough passage, one that doesn't sound too impressive out of context, maybe even a little hokey...but it made sense to me.
I first read Bradbury's Dandelion Wine in Ms. Goudie's class in junior high, and it opened my eyes as a writer. I'd of course wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, taking after my Dad. Maybe not become a reporter--I didn't have an interest in that--but I wanted to play with words. I'd written all kinds of half-assed story ideas that went nowhere when I was a preteen, but it wasn't until Dandelion Wine that I understood writing. I got how he was telling the story. (I often say that Lee J. Hindle's Dragon Fall was another inspiration, but I think that particular book was more of a "hey, I can do this too!" influence.)
In that summer of 1994, I'd finally decided once and for all to stop dithering and start writing on a consistent basis. I'd toyed with writing earlier that year when I was working at the Harvard Coop store in Brookline (the makings of Two Thousand), but it wasn't until that summer when I bought that book that everything started to click. Everything started to make sense. All I needed to do was start each day with the reminder that I needed to write something. And by something, I mean anything--whatever popped into my head. If I had to start somewhere, that was it. Start at the beginning.
From the 'Run Fast, Stand Still...' essay in the same book:
...But along through those years I began to make lists of titles, to put down long lines of nouns. These lists were provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface. I was feeling my way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.
The lists ran something like this:
The Lake. The Night. The Crickets. The Ravine. The Attic. The Basement. The Trapdoor. The Baby. The Crowd. The Night Train. The Fog Horn. The Scythe. The Carnival. The Carousel. The Dwarf. The Mirror Maze. The Skeleton.
I was beginning to see a pattern in the list, in these words that I had simply flung forth on paper, trusting my subconscious to give bread, as it were, to the birds.
He then goes on to realize that, in looking over this list, he found what he truly loved and remembered and wanted to write about. It's an interesting essay on figuring out what the hell it is you want to write about in the first place.
With this passage, I also came to the conclusion that, instead of forcing the story to where I want it to go, I should engage in writing sessions where I just sit down and let it spill out with abandon, just to see where it went. With this, I began to build the story that became True Faith (and later on, The Phoenix Effect and the Bridgetown trilogy). I did a lot of world building--a LOT of world building, over the course of a few years--and focused on my fascination with underground societies, spirituality, and vigilant protectors.
Zen, and many of his other works, gave me a lot of food for thought. He was a rare author that I read not just for entertainment but also to learn from. The biggest thing I learned from him, and probably the simplest, was his pastoral voice. I was drawn in by the way he told Dandelion Wine by way of a series of images and events over the course of a summer from a young boy's point of view. He didn't try to push the story into your brain like a Michael Bay film; he let the story do it by itself like a Wim Wenders film, quietly and smoothly and without a million explosions. He wrote deceptively simple prose about exceptionally heavy ideas; that's why "It was a pleasure to burn" is still my all-time favorite opening line. Short and simple, but DAMN, it's creepy!
I got to see him at WorldCon in LA in 2006, when he spoke on a special panel and then had a brief signing session. I had him sign one of my copies of Zen in the Art of Writing, and in the brief few seconds I had with him, I said what I wanted to say: "Thank you for inspiring me to start writing when I was a kid." I didn't need to say anything else.
Thanks again, Ray.
