on reading - ray bradbury and the paris review

Love this interview The Paris Review did with Ray Bradbury.  Here
are some bits of what he said about writers and what they read:

Do you read your science-fiction contemporaries?

I’ve always believed that you should do very little reading in your
own field once you’re into it. But at the start it’s good to know what
everyone’s doing.

How about writers younger than you?

I prefer not to read the younger writers in the field. Quite often you
can be depressed by discovering they’ve happened onto an idea you
yourself are working on. What you want is simply to get on with
your own work.

You seem to have been open to a variety of influences.

A conglomerate heap of trash, that’s what I am. But it burns with a
high flame.

photo stories - max wanger

Max Wanger deals with some pretty interesting characters.
Do any of these raise their hands and volunteer a story for
your writing?

The time will come when your characters will write your
stories for you, when your emotions, free of literary cant and
commercial bias, will blast the page and tell the truth.
Remember:  Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow
after your characters have run by on their way to incredible
destinations.  Plot is observed after the fact rather than before.
So, stand aside, forget targets, let the characters, your fingers,
body, blood, and heart do.

- Ray Bradbury, Zen and the Art of Writing

the well written - ray bradbury

I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard
someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face
and it was dry.

Then I looked at the window and thought: Why, yes, it's just the
rain, the rain, always the rain, and turned over, sadder still, and
fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on.

- Ray Bradbury, Green Shadows, White Whale: A Novel of Ray Bradbury's 
Adventures Making Moby Dick with John Huston in Ireland

By Chris Buzelli

illustration - stephen mackey

Mackey describes his own work as densely painted and highly 
mannered.  He seeks perfection in each of his pieces and wants 
them to seem stumbled upon, organic, natural.  I think he's
achieved his goal.  Most of his work does look like a snapshot
of a story, like you turned the corner and found this strange
thing waiting.  His work also makes me think of a perpetual
Wonderland, only for adults.  It's beautiful, melancholy, a bit
off pitch in a haunting way.  (Via the Extra Finger)

On another note, I've posted before about how Ray Bradbury
advises writers to make word lists of the things that make you
drunk on life - nouns coupled with verbs or adjectives that give 
you this special feeling, a feeling that you can then 
communicate to readers in a story.  Mackey's list of precious  
feelings is as follows:
1. Scotch and water
2. The seashore and glockenspiels (like xylophones)
3. Sunlight on rough seas
4. Rose-flavored things and coffee
5. Around-the-house clothes  

 Hopefully you've been keeping your list up too. 
 

illustration - halloween edition

Here are 12 Halloween illustrations that could use a body of words in
explanation.  What kind of stories would you write?

I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea.
- Richard Brautigan, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

Suddenly the day was gone,
night came out from under each tree and spread.
- Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

Dear Great Pumpkin, Halloween is now only a few days away. Children
all over the world await you coming. When you rise out of the pumpkin
patch that night, please remember I am your most loyal follower. Have
a nice trip. Don't forget to take out flight insurance.
- Charles M. Schulz, The Complete Peanuts, Vol. 6: 1961-1962

By Ania Tomicka

By Elia Fernandez

from the screen - looper

Thank you to Looper (and writer Rian Johnson) for a sci-fi film that
takes itself seriously.  And takes its audience's intelligence seriously.
The screenwriting, acting, themes, and more were absolutely amazing.

Quotes from Rian:
One thing all my favorite sci-fi has in common is that it always uses the
sci-fi elements to amplify very human emotions, themes and characters,
and not the other way around. Ray Bradbury was the first sci-fi author I
was ever exposed to as a kid, and is still for me the most masterful example
of using outlandish sci-fi concepts that have nothing to do with our real
lives to get at stuff that strikes right to the heart of our lives. Characters are
hugely important to me when I'm writing, so that naturally ends up being
what leads the whole process.

When I’m writing I’m big into structure and outlining, so I’ll spend the
first 80 percent of the process working in notebooks and working out the
big picture in a space where I can see it. I love connections, I love seeding
stuff in that’s going to pay off later, and figuring out ways to do that in
ways that make sense and feel organic. All that stuff, including the smoking
thing with Emily, was baked into the script. But obviously it’s all got to
serve the character, showing that she had a past she’s given up, that she
misses and thinks about.  (Via Writers Guild of America)

Endgame Entertainment

on writing - EVERY DAY

I'd say this is one piece of writing advice that is forever true: WRITE EVERY DAY.

You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries
and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear
books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for
the next 20,000 days.  And out of that love, remake a world.  - Ray Bradbury

Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite
fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks
of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you
follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully
but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the
world.  - Robert McKee 

By Nguyen Minh Hai

the well written - ray bradbury

He raged for hours. And the skeleton, ever the frail and solelmn philosopher,
hung quietly inside, saying not a word, suspended like a delicate insect within
a chrysalis, waiting and waiting.

- Ray Bradbury, The October Country

By World is my Playground

illustration - kidchan

kiDChan is extremely talented in conveying a very specific mood/atmosphere.

For an artist, this is achieved through color , composition, balance, textures,
application methods, medium, widths, heights, and more.
For a writer, this is done through overt surface imagery, as well as hints of
language, undertones, shadows, nuances, verbal associations, various
effects of rhythm, onomatopoeia and phonetic pattern. (Source)

Certainly different kinds of artists can learn from each other.  Take a look.
How are these moods accomplished, and what language would you use to
translate them into written word? 

In order to convince your reader that he is there, you must assault each of his 
senses, in turn, with color, sound, taste, and texture.  The most improbable tales
can be made believable, if your reader, through his senses, feels certain that he
stands at the middle of events.  - Ray Bradbury, Zen and the Art of Writing

photo stories - the magic of childhood

In Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury tells writers to make word/phrase lists
of everything they found magical throughout their lives - those little things that
get you excited, inspired, the ideas that get one drunk on life.  For him, it was the
circus, the lake, the night, the crickets, ravine, attic, trapdoor, night train, fog horn,
scythe, carnival, dwarf, skeleton, and on and on (page 17).  From these lists, he says,
we should create our stories.

A few of mine are shown below - jumping rope, icicles, hot chocolate in winter,
bubbles.  What is on your list?

By Nadine Anderson

By John (flickr)

By Rebecca Jane

By unknown

illustration - loonaki

Loonaki illustrates long-haired beauties discovering, breathing, being, loving nature.
What kind of water spirit, mother earth, rainbow girl stories to these inspire?
Let the characters run wild in your mind.

As Ray Bradbury says in Zen in the Art of Writing, Characters would do my work for me,
if I let them alone, if I gave them their heads, which is to say, their fantasies, their frights.

AND

Find a character, like yourself, who will want something or not want something, with
all his heart.  Give him running orders.  Shoot him off.  Then follow as fast as you can go. 
The character, in his great love or hate, will rush you through to the end of the story.

on writing - ray bradbury

Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning,
just follow him or her all day.

By Kara Henry

You fail only if you stop writing.

By BreeAnn Veenstra

What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?

By Shannon (deviant art)

You grow ravenous. You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can't sleep at night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you in your bed. It is a grand way to live.

By Angel De Franganillo

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

the well written - ray bradbury

Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet
are dusted with spices from a million flowers.

- Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine