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    Zen in the Art of Writing
    Zen in the Art of Writing
    Zen in the Art of Writing
    Ebook154 pages2 hours

    Zen in the Art of Writing

    By Ray Bradbury

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    About this ebook

    The celebrated author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles offers inspiration and insight on finding one’s muse and channeling it onto the page.
     
    Acclaimed writer of novels and short stories as well as screen- and stage plays, Ray Bradbury has established himself as one of the most legendary voices in science fiction and fantasy. In Zen in the Art of Writing, he shares how his unbridled passion for creating worlds made him a master of the craft.
     
    Part memoir, part philosophical guide, the essays in this book teach the joy of writing. Rather than focusing on the mechanics of putting words together, Bradbury’s zen is found in the celebration of storytelling that drove him to write every day. Bringing together eleven essays and a series of poems written with his own unique style and fervor, Zen in the Art of Writing is a must read for all prospective writers and Bradbury fans.
     
    “Bradbury lovers will find this a Bradbury feast.” —Kirkus Reviews
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 2, 2017
    ISBN9780795350511
    Author

    Ray Bradbury

    Ray Bradbury (22 August 1920 – 5 June 2012) published some 500 short stories, novels, plays and poems since his first story appeared in Weird Tales when he was twenty years old. Among his many famous works are 'Fahrenheit 451,' 'The Illustrated Man,' and 'The Martian Chronicles.'

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    Reviews for Zen in the Art of Writing

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    • 5/5
      Brilliant advice on drawing on the subconscious to create art.
    • 3/5
      Cracking collection of essays, but it's more insight into Bradbury as an author than great tips for writing. Bradbury is of the "gardener" school and lets the stories tell themselves, and he has a hell of a work ethic. That sums up the advice in this book as well. Read, collect experiences, always be writing, let the stories speak. But if you want some great essays on how Bradbury wrote his stories and books, and what the inspirational seeds were and how they grew, this is worth it.
    • 4/5
      Although I bought it hoping for advice as a writer, and there was some of that, mostly it is about the zen in the art of Ray Bradbury's writing. Even without knowing all the author's work well, it was an interesting story of how a writer does exactly what he wants, is true to his vision, and is lauded for it.
    • 5/5
      A must read for anyone who wishes to write and needs some inspiration. Beautiful and easy to follow. Great if you feel the need for a little push in your writing.
    • 5/5
      As Bradbury points out in the closing chapter of this book, some writers write in order to make money, and some others write in order to achieve recognition and accolades, but the best writers write as a response to their own inner calling. For these, writing is a surrender to an unquenchable passion, a tribute to a deep seated drive, an acknowledgement that writing is fulfillment, not simply a job or craft. Just as "a man who does what he loves for a living will never have to work a day in his life," so to the writer who writes for the pure joy of doing it, because he is driven to put pen to paper, because he has stories that simply must be told, and because to not write would be unthinkable.
      Writing is not work but prayer. heaven is not a place reserved for the afterlife but the experience of telling a story well and finding pleasure in the mere telling of it. Words are not put on paper, they dance out of the mind and explode into the world.
      few books convey such passion, such love of craft as does this collection of essays Bradbury published over several years. Bradbury's passion is undisguised and cannot be missed by the reader who glides through the pages. The reader knows that he is reading something special. This is not a tome on the craft of writing written by some professor; it is a love note about the passion Bradbury felt and wanted the world to share throughout his career.
    • 4/5
      Like any good magician, Bradbury shows us his hat and the rabbits of his writing without revealing the magic. Work. Yes, of course. Keep practicing until the process becomes automatic. And how many hours is that? Relax. Let your subconscious bring out the words. No, no, you’re too tense! Don’t think. “Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art.” I must be doing it all wrong! This book reveals Bradbury, the authot, but this writing of the real is not the writing of the imagination that millions love.
    • 4/5
      There is something about Bradbury’s sentence structure that always throws me off, messes with my reading pace and sends me rereading lines and scratching my head. Despite the extra effort needed to read him, it’s always worth it. Zen is a collection of previously-published essays, some of which I had already read before (one in a genre writing book edited by J.N. Williamson, the other in the updated edition of Fahrenheit 451). The essays were written during different periods of Bradbury’s life and chronicle his growth as a writer. Again, a book that’s more bio than how-to, but if you absolutely require instructive writing with your memoirs, check out the chapter where he talks about his single-word list-making. It’s excellent advice.
    • 4/5
      ... the failure to relax a particular tension can lead to madness.That's probably my favorite line in this short little book about writing. Ray Bradbury put together a few essays about how he writes. He came across kind of nerdy, but hey, he did write The Illustrative Man, one of my favorite science fiction books. I could have done without the poems that ended the book but I read them too. This was my second reading and he said the same thing the second time around... word for word. Funny that.
    • 5/5
      Ray (I cannot, after reading this, be so unfeeling and impersonal as to call him Bradbury) does not sit you down and spoon-feed you the elements of style. But then, that's what books like "The Elements of Style" are for.In an age when everyone seems to have a novel in their drawer, and when (as a direct consequence of the drawer situation) everybody who's published maybe half a book once feels qualified to tell you how to and how not to write, it is actually refreshing to bump into a book that does something else altogether: make you want to write.There is little talk about techniques (although there are a few invaluable practical pointers). What there is a lot of is the passion, exhuberance, childlike joy of a man who tells stories because it is what makes him feel alive, real, sane. Ray calls this "zest, gusto", and he is right in saying that too many writers nowadays are so busy agonising over the right way of saying something and making money in the process that they have forgotten what these words mean - they are doing the best job in the world, and have lost the ability/innocence to enjoy it.In conclusion. If you're looking to be taken by the hand along the mysterious, mystical avenue where writers "find their ideas", this is not the book for you - nor is any other real book in the real world, so good luck to you. If, on the other hand, you're looking for a friend, a mentor, a teacher whose wise, entertaining, inspiring words will make your fingers itch for a keyboard/typewriter/H.B. pencil/you name it, then get this.
    • 4/5
      This book like all Ray Bradbury books makes you smile and gives a glimpse of the day to day working (or playing) of a true craftsman. He shows how he jumps off the cliff and builds his wings on the way down - and though most of us will never succeed to the extent that we ever soar like Ray Bradbury, it's still fun to watch.
    • 5/5
      ZEN IN THE ART OF WRITINGBradbury’s essays on creativity are a series of pep talks for writers. Few of us will have his talent but we all can learn from his insightful advice.One of Bradbury’s tips: “You will have to write …. a lot of material before you are comfortable… You might as well start now and get the necessary work done.” He wrote at least a thousand words everyday from the age of twelve. His advice is to write from your passion; write with zest. He kept a list of possible story titles and in time most of these memory prompts turned into published stories.Zen in the Art of Writing--Essays on Creativity by Ray Bradbury @1989 is a wonderfully inspiring book that aspiring writers need to read, not just once, but often. His enthusiasm leaps off the page and catches you. His practical tips and advice help immediately. Get this book, read it. It’s great.
    • 4/5
      This is a curious but very interesting book which came as something of a surprise. Those of you familiar with Ray Bradbury's work will probably know him for his novels and short stories, often with a science fiction theme.In this book Ray talks of the creative process. The book is actually a collection of essays written over a period of over twenty years. Though he describes creativity directed at the process of writing, the lessons and ideas have a much broader relevance. Ray reveals some how-to’s including the simple idea of capturing key words to describe ideas in a notebook. He describes how sometimes these key words have lay dormant in his notebook, even for decades, before they have been the spark for a story, almost as if as keys they waited for him to realise the ideas they represented.For me however the main feature revealed is the immense passion associated with creativity. The book exudes this passion through the use of sometimes exquisite language which captures the essence of a life of creative change. “I have not so much thought my way through life, as done things and found out what it was and who I was after doing it.”On later realising why he chose particular names for characters in a story, he writes "What a sly thing my subconscious was to name them thus. And not to tell me,"On ideas he writes "I'd thought that you could beat, pummel and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity and dies."This isn't the usual management fare at all, but I offer it as something to read that captures something of the true magic of creativity. Enjoy the feeling as new neurons are sparked into life by its messages and style of approach.
    • 5/5
      Ray Bradbury was a generous and down to earth communicator eager to share his insights after a lifetime of writing. He shared his failures as well as his successes and both were instructive. Bradbury came up with a process that pushed him forward and helped him get the practice he needed to solve problems in story writing. He wrote a story a week. Starting on a Monday, he would write like mad just to get it down in one sitting. No editing. No self-consciousness. Then on Tuesday through Friday he edited each day. On Saturday he "let go" of it and sent it off to a publisher. He didn't over work the stories, but just worked on them a few hours a day. That all important first day, Monday, became the day he kept the critic out and allowed that instinctive inner story teller to get to the most important seeds of his story. That freed him to let the editor out on the other days and craft the story with a fresh approach each day. This method also puts writing into perspective. The idea that creative inspiration is about 20% of a good story and the remaining 80% is doing the hard work of editing makes perfect sense. This was one of the most helpful, if not THE most helpful book I've read on the subject of writing. It makes you leap out of your chair and write.
    • 4/5
      A visceral explanation of the writing process, The book is filled with slices of Bradbury's life. For example, he paid ten cents a half hour on the coin operated typewriters at UCLA to write Fahrenheit 451. It's a thought provoking read.
    • 4/5
      I would read anything written by Ray Bradbury. Anything. Although this is not the most helpful guide for aspiring writers, it offers many helpful suggestions, and it is an excellent book for fans of the author and anyone curious about his process.
    • 4/5
      A wonderful glimpse into an original mind. The stories of how his ideas grew into books and tales are my favorite parts, how he describes everyday things to show the wonder and terror. "Write what you know" twists into useful advice as he describes the ravine outside of town, its mystery and the dread of young boys who have to pass by it at night. Bradbury offers the key to seeing your own world from a different angle, opening thousands of new ideas and plots you may never have seen before.Plus, it's Bradbury and his wonderful words. Since Roger Zelazny didn't write a book showing the workings of his prose, I shall be content to revel in this book.
    • 3/5
      I read this on a lark. It was in the free books bin and even though I haven't written in a long, long time, I still sometimes feel the urge to pretend that I will write my masterpiece. Most of Bradbury's essays are about how a particular story came to him, how inspiration sneaks up on him. All very interesting, but not exactly useful to another writer, as each writer has his/her own process of inspiration. Not that this book was not worth reading, or that it wasn't pleasant to read. I see it as more encouragement to wanna-be writers. Bradbury's enthusiasm is quite charming.
    • 2/5
      I'm not saying this book is bad, but rather it turned out to be a lot less useful than I was hoping. Here are my few scattered thoughts:1. The essays here span several decades, and yet Bradbury's writing style and tone of voice don't tend to change much. I guess he settled on his voice early on and it just stuck.2. He talks about his own novels a lot - where the inspiration came from, what it was like to write the story - but he does so with the right modest:humblebrag ratio. In other words, it doesn't grate.3. There's not a lot of highly usable info here. The central point is this: write more and you will get better. I'm not sure I agree. While it's true that the more you write, the better you will get at writing more, I think without feedback you might find that the writing is simply never improving. There's just more of it.4. Bradbury lived in a time that has vanished - writers don't get the opportunities he had, and while he certainly worked to achieve his success, the path was not strewn with the obstacles that the writer of today must somehow get past.5. Boy, he really wanted to get his poetry published somewhere! I didn't read much of it - I'm a poor judge of anything more free-form than a sonnet - but how this ended up here is a mystery.So should you read this book? I picked it up for a few dollars, and it was probably worth the read. It motivated me to write, so there's that to go in the plus column, if nothing else.
    • 3/5
      Ray Bradbury was a highly prolific writer best known for The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451.

      In Zen in the Art of Writing is a collection of essays Bradbury wrote over the years in which he chronicles many of his writing experiences, his triumphs and failures, and the wisdom he gathered along the way.

      The final essay, which is also the books title, is the most enlightening. Bradbury gets more succinct and to the heart of the matter. A writers tasks are "work, relaxation, don't think". These three can be used in any order but all three are essential.
    • 5/5
      One of the best books on writing I ever read.
    • 5/5
      Great book. very inspiring. I am a fan of anything Bradbury but this was a helpful little book.
    • 3/5
      This book is a collection of essays detailing an early section of Ray Bradbury's writing life. He offers thoughts on why writing works for him and how certain aspects of his writing developed. Similar to "On Writing" by Stephen King, it is definitely part autobiography and part writing reference. Some tips resonated with me as to how to develop ideas, while others felt a little dated. From a writer's standpoint, it offers a few basics that could assist people, but it is limited in scope. For the fan of Bradbury, definitely offers great insight into where and how he developed his books and stories. Mixed opinion on this. Probably recommend.
    • 5/5
      Perhaps the most important lesson in this collection of essays, for me, was that writing is work for the soul and should not be work for a monetary payoff. Write and relax, but write and work. Don't stress, don't over think it... but do it. For any writer, aspiring to be an author or not, this is a worthwhile read, to get your mind into creative mode. I particularly loved the idea of word plays which inspired some of Bradbury's work.
    • 5/5
      Excellent.
    • 4/5
      This book is a collection of essays about the author's writing process, written over man years, that he feels could benefit other writers. Ray Bradbury is one of the greatest American writers of the 20th Century. He has been labelled a science fiction author, probably because of his Martian Chronicles, but he has written in a number of genres and science fiction is only a third of his output. He had a remarkable memory, claiming that he could remember moments shortly after his birth, suckling at his mother's breast, and being circumcised at the age of four. In addition, he was able to write out the scripts of a radio serial from memory. He has written, novels, short stories, essays, poems, stage plays, and screenplays. And he has designed displays in exhibition buildings such as Disney's Epcot Centre.In my opinion, this book is a great insight into the craft and writing process of this great author. But as with every practice, each writer has to find his own way. Thus, this book may help if you are able to follow the same process. However, people like me need a little more structure in order to find our way. I give this book 4 stars out of 5.
    • 4/5
      I have admired Ray Bradbury's writing for several decades now, so it was natural that I would love Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity. Bradbury always writes from the heart, and this collection of writing advice is no exception. Here's what I'm talking about:You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer's make-up, the things that shape his materials and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto.One-thousand or two-thousand words every day for the next twenty years. At the start, you might shoot for one short story a week, fifty-two stories a year, for five years. You will have to write and put away or burn a lot of material before you are comfortable in this medium. You might as well start now and get the necessary work done.Bradbury's essays shine with energy, joy, and writerly encouragement. In short, they have zest and gusto. Reading Zen in the Art of Writing is like having your own personal writing cheerleader. Bradbury comes across so personable, so friendly, so ordinary, that you come to believe that you--an ordinary person yourself--could actually write something worth reading.Bradbury encourages the writer to mine the deep caverns of childhood memories, to make lists of nouns that resonate in the chambers of the soul, and to create titles that spark a story.Essays include:
      • "The Joy of Writing" - 1973
      • "Run Fast, Stand Still, or The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or New Ghosts from Old Minds" - 1986
      • "How to Keep and Feed a Muse" - 1961
      • "Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle" - 1980
      • "Investing Dimes: Fahrenheit 451" - 1982
      • "Just This Side of Byzantium: Dandelion Wine" - 1974
      • "The Long Road to Mars" - 1990
      • "On the Shoulders of Giants..." - 1939, re-edited in 1980
      • "The Secret Mind" - 1965
      • "Shooting Haiku in a Barrel" - 1982
      • "Zen in the Art of Writing" - 1973
      I'll be re-reading this book again and again as I try and keep and feed my own writing muse. If the writing flame in you has become an ember, or if you're trying to get the fire going for the first time, this slim volume of essays will act like oxygen and turn that desire into an inferno of creativity.
    • 5/5
      I've read this a couple of times now, and it stands as a great master's variation on the theme of "if you want to be a writer, write."
    • 3/5
      This isn’t so much a book on writing as it is a collection of essays about writing and inspiration. I do like getting into the mind of an author, and Bradbury does this really well in the collection. I liked how he describes his own personal writing process and his different founts of inspiration. Overall, I wouldn’t say it’s a must-read on the level of say, Stephen King’s On Writing, but it’s a good read, especially for horror/fantasy/sci-fi/mystery authors.
    • 3/5
      Largely a collection of essays written by Bradbury over the course of his career, this is an interesting look into the life of one of the century's best-known sci-fi writers, though writers looking for specific writing instruction might want to look elsewhere.

      Like Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird," this is not a "How-To" book replete with bullet points and step-by-step directions.

      Instead, it's a chronicle of a well-known writer's journey from 12 year-old wannabe to successful fiction writer, and it's more fascinating for the pitcture it paints of a compulsive writer (and his thinking) than it was for specific writing tips.

      I liked it, but I also like Bradbury, so while it's worth a read, it's also heavy on concepts like tapping into your subconscious.

      (One constant from all the "writers on writing" books I've read; take notes. Lots of them.)

    • 5/5
      This book has been with me for a long time... a looooooooooong time. This is probably the fifth or sixth time I've read through it start to finish.It has been my constant companion, following me from college to college, town to town, traveling with me by air and by sea, and always, always inspiring me. Whenever I begin to doubt my convictions as a writer, I turn to Mr. Bradbury's sage wisdom and see exactly what I'm doing wrong. The advice he gives might not always stick, but that is more my own fault than his. I'm hoping this time will be different... but then, I always do. He writes with such verve, as if the words are struggling to get out of him. And this is a standard with him throughout time, as the essays included here all come from various points in his life yet contain the same passion. I can only hope to one day attain that.Tomorrow morning I plan to jump out of bed and step on the landmine that is me. Then I'll spend a good chunk of the rest of the day putting the pieces together. As he says, it's my turn. JUMP!

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Zen in the Art of Writing - Ray Bradbury

    Sometimes I am stunned at my capacity as a nine-year-old, to understand my entrapment and escape it.

    How is it that the boy I was in October, 1929, could, because of the criticism of his fourth grade schoolmates, tear up his Buck Rogers comic strips and a month later judge all of his friends idiots and rush back to collecting?

    Where did that judgment and strength come from? What sort of process did I experience to enable me to say: I am as good as dead. Who is killing me? What do I suffer from? What’s the cure?

    I was able, obviously, to answer all of the above. I named the sickness: my tearing up the strips. I found the cure: go back to collecting, no matter what.

    I did. And was made well.

    But still. At that age? When we are accustomed to responding to peer pressure?

    Where did I find the courage to rebel, change my life, live alone?

    I don’t want to over-estimate all this, but damn it, I love that nine-year-old, whoever in hell he was. Without him, I could not have survived to introduce these essays.

    Part of the answer, of course, is in the fact that I was so madly in love with Buck Rogers, I could not see my love, my hero, my life, destroyed. It is almost that simple. It was like having your best all-round greatest-loving-buddy, pal, center-of-life drown or get shotgun killed. Friends, so killed, cannot be saved from funerals. Buck Rogers, I realized, might know a second life, if I gave it to him. So I breathed in his mouth and, lo!, he sat up and talked and said, what?

    Yell. Jump. Play. Out-run those sons-of-bitches. They’ll never live the way you live. Go do it.

    Except I never used the S.O.B. words. They were not allowed. Heck! was about the size and strength of my outcry. Stay alive!

    So I collected comics, fell in love with carnivals and World’s Fairs and began to write. And what, you ask, does writing teach us?

    First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation.

    So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.

    Secondly, writing is survival. Any art, any good work, of course, is that.

    Not to write, for many of us, is to die.

    We must take arms each and every day, perhaps knowing that the battle cannot be entirely won, but fight we must, if only a gentle bout. The smallest effort to win means, at the end of each day, a sort of victory. 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.

    A variation of this is true for writers. Not that your style, whatever that is, would melt out of shape in those few days.

    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.

    For writing allows just the proper recipes of truth, life, reality as you are able to eat, drink, and digest without hyperventilating and flopping like a dead fish in your bed.

    I have learned, on my journeys, that if I let a day go by without writing, I grow uneasy. Two days and I am in tremor. Three and I suspect lunacy. Four and I might as well be a hog, suffering the flux in a wallow. An hour’s writing is tonic. I’m on my feet, running in circles, and yelling for a clean pair of spats.

    So that, in one way or another, is what this book is all about.

    Taking your pinch of arsenic every morn so you can survive to sunset. Another pinch at sunset so that you can more-than-survive until dawn.

    The mirco-arsenic-dose swallowed here prepares you not to be poisoned and destroyed up ahead.

    Work in the midst of life is that dosage. To manipulate life, toss the bright-colored orbs up to mix with the dark ones, blending a variation of truths. We use the grand and beautiful facts of existence in order to put up with the horrors that afflict us directly in our families and friends, or through the newspapers and T.V.

    The horrors are not to be denied. Who amongst us has not had a cancer-dead friend? 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.

    Which means writing as cure. Not completely, of course. You never get over your parents in the hospital or your best love in the grave.

    I won’t use the word therapy, it’s too clean, too sterile a word. I only say when death slows others, you must leap to set up your diving board and dive head first into your typewriter.

    The poets and artists of other years, long past, knew all and everything I have said here, or put in the following essays. Aristotle said it for the ages. Have you listened to him lately?

    These essays were written at various times over a thirty-year period, to express special discoveries, to serve special needs. But they all echo the same truths of explosive self-revelation and continuous astonishment at what your deep well contains if you just haul off and shout down it.

    Even as I write this, a letter has come from a young, unknown writer, who says he is going to live by my motto, found in my Toynbee Convector.

    "…to gently lie and prove the lie true… everything is finally a promise… what seems a lie is a ramshackle need, wishing to be born…"

    And now:

    I have come up with a new simile to describe myself lately. It can be yours.

    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.

    Now, it’s your turn. Jump!

    THE JOY OF WRITING

    Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer’s make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto.

    You have your list of favorite writers; I have mine. Dickens, Twain, Wolfe, Peacock, Shaw, Molière, Jonson, Wycherly, Sam Johnson. Poets: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dylan Thomas, Pope. Painters: El Greco, Tintoretto. Musicians: Mozart, Haydn, Ravel, Johann Strauss (!). Think of all these names and you think of big or little, but nonetheless important, zests, appetites, hungers. Think of Shakespeare and Melville and you think of thunder, lightning, wind. They all knew the joy of creating in large or small forms, on unlimited or restricted canvases. These are the children of the gods. They knew fun in their work. No matter if creation came hard here and there along the way, or what illnesses and tragedies touched their most private lives. The important things are those passed down to us from their hands and minds and these are full to bursting with animal vigor and intellectual vitality. Their hatreds and despairs were reported with a kind of love.

    Look at El Greco’s elongation and tell me, if you can, that he had no joy in his work? Can you really pretend that Tintoretto’s God Creating the Animals of the Universe is a work founded on anything less than fun in its widest and most completely involved sense? The best jazz says, Gonna live forever; don’t believe in death. The best sculpture, like the head of Nefertiti, says again and again, The Beautiful One was here, is here, and will be here, forever. Each of the men I have listed seized a bit of the quicksilver of life, froze it for all time and turned, in the blaze of their creativity, to point at it and cry, Isn’t this good! And it was good.

    What has all this to do with writing the short story in our times?

    Only this: if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don’t even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is—excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it’d be better for his health.

    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?

    Wouldn’t it be wonderful, for instance, to throw down a copy of Harper’s Bazaar you happened to be leafing through at the dentist’s, and leap to your typewriter and ride off with hilarious anger, attacking their silly and sometimes shocking snobbishness? Years ago I did just that. I came across an issue where the Bazaar photographers, with their perverted sense of equality, once again utilized natives in a Puerto Rican backstreet as props in front of which their starved-looking mannikins postured for the benefit of yet more emaciated half-women in the best

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