Product Description
"Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a land mine. The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!" Zest. Gusto. Curiosity. These are the qualities every writer must have, as well as a spirit of adventure. In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing. Here are practical tips on the art of writing from a master of the craft-everything from finding original ideas to developing your own voice and style-as well as the inside story of Bradbury's own remarkable career as a prolific author of novels, stories, poems, films, and plays. Zen In The Art Of Writing is more than just a how-to manual for the would-be writer: it is a celebration of the act of writing itself that will delight, impassion, and inspire the writer in you. In it, Bradbury encourages us to follow the unique path of our instincts and enthusiasms to the place where our inner genius dwells, and he shows that success as a writer depends on how well you know one subject: your own life.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 38 reviews)

Surprisingly good

I picked up this book because it kind of "jumped off the shelf." It was on a day that I was looking for inspiration in the bookstore and the other books on my list weren't in stock. This book had a nice low price, coupled with my teacher's discount, and was written by a literary master. All this is to say that it had the makings of a good book but I almost expected it to be boring since he's from the "old school". Well...the book was excellent! It was a breath of fresh perspective. Even though it's short (about 150 pages) it is filled with Bradbury's memoirs, lending a sneak peak into his publishing life, which to me is exciting. Although the author discusses his method for inspiration and developing stories, I did not feel as if the book taught me how to unlock my creative genius. For me the value was that it encourages you to keep writing despite rejections, through sharing personal experiences, because we can see who he is today. In my opinon, this wonderful book about writing only comes second to Anne Lammott's Bird by Bird.
August 11, 2008

Forget Writing Seminars and Read This Book

Having taught writing for twenty years, publishing four novels along the way, I regard this as the bible on the craft of writing. Bradbury's advice to have fun and let one's fingers play across the keyboard, letting enthusiasm and a love of words govern the composing process, cuts through the the tedious, mind-numbing literary algorithms of writing seminars and classes.

I suppose it's legitimate to discuss aspects of writing such as characterization, pacing, plot arc, and backstory ... if one is a lit major. There's a time and a place for everything saith the Book of Ecclesiastes, but I'm not at all convinced that the classroom teaches one to write well. I have never heard a lecture on narrative technique that didn't help me catch up on sleep. Worse yet, writing seminars usually pair you with a peer critic who knows less than you do, causing you to revise a decent piece of writing to satisfy Muffy from Vassar. Like Stephen King said in ON WRITING, if you want to be a writer, "read a lot and write a lot." To which I say, "Amen and amen."

No one can really teach anyone else how to write, and that's what makes this book such a refreshing change from the how-to books in the writing section at B&N. Bradbury wants you to love the craft, advising that whatever is good and possible in writing will flow from the springs of passion and the desire to create. Aspiring writers sit down with much angst, trying to juggle rules of composition in their minds as they begin a story. Once a story is in progress, there is constant self-editing and critiquing instead of writing the story. Bradbury's dictum is to unfocus, as it were (hence the "zen"), and let ideas slam the page "like a lightning bolt." Find a character, he says, and "shoot him off." Yes, all writers must then do the dirty work of going back to edit and revise, but that's for later. Bradbury tells us that he wrote the first draft of FAHRENHEIT 451 in seven days because he was motivated. Any such confession of a writer today in an anal-retentive literary marketplace would be regarded as lunacy and the remark of a novice not destined for publication.

The book is filled with other wonderful anecdotes about how the author began his stories and fed the muse, and each one is inspirational and worth far more than lectures that leave one feeling as if writing is an arcane exercise for people who eat caviar with literary agents. ZEN IN THE ART OF WRITING is about real people with a real desire to communicate their emotions in a vital, honest, and original manner.

As the cover blurb says, writing "is a celebration, not a chore." Buy this book!
May 18, 2008

Love what you do - - - the words will come naturally

Writing about writing is wrought with woe, because a clever few words gathered by one writer may become muck in the minds of some readers.

However, here goes. Good conversation is based on a genuine interest in others. But, the key to good writing is a genuine interest in good ideas. Bradbury loves ideas, he is a master of wonderful "what if?" flights of fancy. For example, who else could see a fallen harbour pier and imagine it into a lovelorn dinosaur?

Bradbury uses words and ideas the way Thomas Edison used science and ideas. But what launches such talent? In Bradbury's case, a wondrous magician with a seedy two-bit carnival who took time to listen to the great ideas of a 12-year-old boy.

Complicated? Stephen Leacock once said about writing, "You just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself -- it is the occurring which is difficult."

So, how does Bradbury do it? Basically, his life is a fun adventure; he enjoys life; facing his day's work is not a burden, for him writing is always the fever, the delight, the ardor of life itself. He has the spirit of wonder, adventure and mischief of a seven-year-old. Think 'Calvin' of comic strip fame, and you appreciate the mind of Bradbury. If this seems odd, it is only because 'Calvin' is a cartoon boy instead of a white-haired old sage. Bradbury's ideas underwent a similar evolution from fantasy to relevance in the 1950s, when librarians and scientists awoke to see the genius inherent in science fiction.

A second element, which Bradbury downplays, also relates to Leacock, "I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it." Bradbury enjoys his work with the delight 'Calvin' has in playing. If there isn't a 'Hobbes' in Bradbury's life, it's only because he hasn't told us of it yet.

A third element is Bradbury's love of books. In his early career, he wrote in the basement of a library. For a break, he went upstairs to the library and, in his words, "There I strolled, lost in love, down the corridors, and through the stacks, touching books, pulling volumes out, turning pages, thrusting volumes back, drowning in all the good stuffs that are the essence of libraries."

This book is much more than "zen", it celebrates "love" in a way that is almost lost in today's world . . .. . but which nonetheless has profound meaning. Romance novels are about the quest for love; Bradbury is someone who celebrates a love of new ideas every day.

Few books about writing are this good.

January 16, 2008

excellent

This is a keeper. Sometimes as authors we second guess ourselves and this really helps put writing into perspective.
December 26, 2007

Etiology of a fictionist

It was fascinating to read here the writing autobiography of one of the favorite authors of my youthful self. Bradbury's reflection on his boyhood literary influences easily triggered my own look back to the time when he was mine. Zen, by the author's admission, was a very new concept for him (just a few weeks old) when he wrote the title essay in this collection. And also, he confesses, used as his title the way a medicine show barker would use "calliope, drum and Blackfoot Indian," to get the audience's attention. As for his actually doing the Zen thing, that would be a longer story, and the subtext of this book. Bradbury recounts the catalytic events of a long literary life, the necessary attention to the memory-material within, the introspective silence and the stepping out of bed onto a fresh metaphorical landmine each morning, the links back through time to smells and sights and fears and loves that shaped the stories he came to tell. Living like a lizard: full tilt boogey or unblinking on a rock. Details of formative events as disparate as the writing of his best known novel, FAHRENHEIT 451, in the basement of the L.A. Public Library or an early encounter with Mr. Electrico, a sideshow performer in a second-rate carnival paint a vivid self-portrait of a writing life. ('451 was written on a pay-per-use public library typewriter which required a dime per half hour, and the finished original manuscript cost Bradbury $9.80. Not a bad investment for a bestseller turned movie script which is still in print forty-five years later. And, of course, 451 tells the tale of a future day when all books are burned by official edict, starting with the libraries... Mr. Electrico zapped him with the news that he had lived before, and was immortal.) As a practical writing guide, ZEN pales compared to "DEEP WRITING, 7 PRINCIPLES THAT BRING IDEAS TO LIFE (Tarcher/Putnam, 1999) by Eric Maisel but this is a far better story: electrified, blazoned with color, and drunk while in charge of its own bicycle. A real treat for current or one-time or future Bradbury fans.
November 27, 2007

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

On Writing
by Stephen King

Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity
by Ray Bradbury

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
by Natalie Goldberg

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
by Anne Lamott

BECOMING A WRITER
by Dorothea Brande