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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

And so, between Ray and Rain, I’m trying to write something every day. It’s surprisingly hard. All of the words I write every day in inconsequential email, all the words spoken in meetings, all the words listened to on tv, radio, podcasts, youtube, and read on Facebook, and I struggle to have something consequential to say on my own.

Ray Bradbury, my favorite author since I can’t remember when, wrote a story every day – or at least until he was very near the end. One thing that he said, in some foreword to one of his books, stuck with me – that most of them were rubbish, but that that didn’t matter. It was more important to write, and exercise the muscle, than to have everything one writes be a masterpiece. And, out of the rubbish, a few ideas spring, and from the ideas, the art.

I keep expecting, in the years after Ray’s death, to see a flood of publications of The Other Stuff. I’m both looking forward to it, and dreading it. He threw it out for a reason.

But, just one look at his office should let you know that he never actually threw something out. So, one of these days, we’re going to see new books by Bradbury, and most of it is going to be really bad. But there will be gems in there that make it worthwhile.

So, while I know I’m no Bradbury, I will try to keep it going, and write something every day, and hope that one of these days I’ll find some more stories and poems lurking around the dusty corners of my mind.

 

Write every day

Last year, I tried very hard to write every day, and did a pretty good job of sticking to that. This year, it’s been spotty, at best.I wrote a lot while in Amsterdam, and very little since I got back. Trying very hard to write, but, as Bradbury observes in the foreword of Dandelion Wine:

Like every beginner, I thought 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.

Having met two of my very favorite authors – Douglas Adams and Arthur C Clarke – I can not think of any author I’d more like to meet than Mr. Bradbury, but I have no idea what I’d ask him, for I feel that I already know him, from what he has written. And the most important thing I’ve learned from him is simply to write every day, whether I have something to write or not. Of course, very very few can ever hope to rise to his level, but I imagine I have good story or two hiding away somewhere, waiting for me to write it.