Zen in the Art of Writing

by Ray Bradbury

Which family exists where some relative has not been killed or maimed by the automobile? I know of none. In my own circle, an aunt, and uncle, and a cousin, as well as six friends, have been destroyed by the car. The list is endless and crushing if we do not creatively oppose it.

How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or your real hatred somehow got onto the paper? When was the last time you dared release a cherished prejudice so it slammed the page like a lightning bolt? 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?

“Sun and Shadow,” the story of an old Puerto Rican who ruins the Bazaar photographer’s afternoon by sneaking into each picture and dropping his pants.

When was the last time you were stopped by the police in your neighborhood because you like to walk, and perhaps think, at night? It happened to me just often enough that, irritated, I wrote “The Pedestrian,” a story of a time, fifty years from now, when a man is arrested and taken off for clinical study because he insists on looking at un-televised reality, and breathing un-air-conditioned air.

During these years, Henry Kuttner, along with Leigh, was my teacher. He suggested authors—Katherine Anne Porter, John Collier, Eudora Welty—and books—The Lost Weekend, One Man’s Meat, Rain in the Doorway—to be read and learned from.

Trains and boxcars and the smell of coal and fire are not ugly to children. Ugliness is a concept that we happen on later and become self-conscious about. Counting boxcars is a prime activity of boys. Their elders fret and fume and jeer at the train that holds them up, but boys happily count and cry the names of the cars as they pass from far places.

Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.

Did you know that people meet in great head-on bicycle collisions, and suffer from fearful concussions for years after, all over Eire? They do. I have caught and held them in one act. Did you know that in the cinemas each night just an instant before the Irish National Anthem is due to explode its rhythms, there is a terrible surge and outflux as people fight to escape through the exits so as not to hear the dread music again? It happens. I saw it. I ran with them. Now I have done it as a play, “The Anthem Sprinters.”

I have been stopped once too often by policemen at night who ask me what I am doing, walking on the sidewalk. I have written a play called “The Pedestrian,” laid in the future, about the plight of similar walkers in the cities.

You have an eye-catching way of using nouns as verbs. At one point you describe Charles Holloway as “a father who storked his legs and turkeyed his arms.” Can descriptive language like that ever make it to the screen? A good director could do it. Would you still see the bird? A good director would find a way, because what you’re shooting is haiku. You’re shooting haiku in a barrel.

I saw The Only Game in Town, George Stevens’ film about gambling in Las Vegas, on TV recently. Warren Beatty and Elizabeth Taylor, who is a little bit Porky Pig. About a half hour in, Taylor turns to Beatty and she says, “Carry me into the bedroom.” Well, there’s no way to do anything but laugh. I thought, “He’s going to throw his back out.” I mean there goes your film. So when you do a fantasy for the screen, make sure people don’t fall off their seats.

As soon as things get difficult, I walk away. That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you. If you try to approach a cat and pick it up, hell, it won’t let you do it. You’ve got to say, “Well, to hell with you.” And the cat says, “Wait a minute. He’s not behaving the way most humans do.” Then the cat follows you out of curiosity: