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10 writing tips from Ray Bradbury

It’s not just tips to gain knowledge from the master. It is a memory of the passed experience and a lifestyle of one of the greatest writers in the twentieth century. In this article you will find Ray Bradbury’s writing advices (how to become a writer) from his speech in 2001 on Writer’s Symposium.

Don’t start out writing novels. They take too much of your time. Begin your writing life instead by publishing“a hell of a lot of short stories,” as many as one per week. The more, the better. Take a year to do it; he claims that it simply isn’t possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row. Bradbury worked in such pace until the age of 30 to write his first novel, «Fahrenheit 451».

You may love them, but you can’t be them. Bear that in mind when you inevitably attempt, consciously or unconsciously, to imitate your favorite writers. Young Bradbury idols were such authors as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, and L. Frank Baum.

Examine “quality” short stories. Bradbury studied the works of several authors as Roald Dahl, Guy de Maupassant, and the lesser-known Nigel Kneale and John Collier. Anything in the New Yorker today doesn’t make his cut, since he finds that their stories have “no metaphor.”

Don't stuff your head. To accumulate the intellectual building blocks of these metaphors, he suggests a course of bedtime reading: one short story, one poem (Pope, Shakespeare, and Frost, not modern “crap”), and one essay. These essays should come from a diversity of fields, including archaeology, zoology, biology, philosophy, politics, and literature. “At the end of a thousand nights,” so he sums it up, “Jesus, you’ll be full of stuff!”

Get rid of friends who don’t believe in you. Do they make fun of your writerly ambitions? Don't hesitate and “fire them” if needed.

«Write with joy. Writing is not a serious business. If a story starts to feel like work, scrap it and start one that doesn’t. I want you to envy me my joy.»

Don’t plan on making money. Bradbury's wife, took a vow of poverty. Their first car a couple could afford after 10 years of marriage, and he still never got around to picking up a driving license.

List of 20 things, that you love and hate. Then write 10 stories about things you like, and “kill” the black ten — also by writing about them. Do the same with your fears.

Just type any old thing that comes into your head. To break down any creative blockages will help a “word association”, since “you don’t know what’s in you until you test it.”

Remember, you are wrinting to one person only that will come up and tell you, “I love you for what you are doing.” If you can't achieve it then you are writing for someone to come up and tell you, “You are not that nuts like people say.”