Zen in the Art of Writing

by Ray Bradbury

Remember that pianist who said that if he did not practice every day he would know, if he did not practice for two days, the critics would know, after three days, his audiences would know.

But what would happen is that the world would catch up with and try to sicken you. If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy, or both. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

the flux in a wallow. An hour’s writing is tonic.

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.

And when a man talks from his heart, in his moment of truth, he speaks poetry.

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing.

By living well, by observing as you live, by reading well and observing as you read, you have fed Your Most Original Self.

new ways of survival. We are the reliquaries

ZEN IN THE ART OF ARCHERY, a book by Eugen Herrigel.

Aldous Huxley’s ‘The Education of an Amphibian’ in his book, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

Dorothea Brande’s Becoming A Writer,

Not smash and grab, but rather find and keep; Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep