“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.