Run fast, Stand still

In chapter two of Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, he explores a couple of concepts. The first one is:

Don’t think

To hesitate is death. Blurt it out in whatever form your words take. Tidy it up later, but get the words out now while the truth is still in your heart.

In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon the truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.

You most likely know that feeling. You get an image in your head and you start to ponder on the best way to describe it to the blind-to-your-mind audience.

“I’ll describe this Poe-like, or maybe Lovecraft-esque with a twist of Pirsig!“

NO!

Find your truth in your own words. We may spend many years imitating the greats, but don’t spend enough time examining the inner tick-tocks echoing in our own skulls.

He got past this, albeit very slowly, simply by making a list of nouns; a list of ten things he feared. Then, he wrote abut each thing. He touched on this in chapter one and digs deeper here.

He would start out with a non-structured poem/prose/essay and somewhere within the first page or two, a character forms. Soon after, he finds something to sink his teeth into and the character writes the rest of the story for him.

He makes it sound effortless, but he spends a lot of time talking about his failures, too.

I decided to do this exercise. It was interesting because the first few were the hardest, then all of a sudden the floodgates opened. I rattled off the remaining seven or eight at lightning speed.

• The man in the door
• The intruder
• The basement
• The furnace
• The janitor
• The principal
• The bus driver
• The road at night
• The tombstone
• The poison berries

It was weird how some of my old childhood hauntings, ones I thought were long dead and buried, bubbled to the surface.

So will I be able to create a story for each item on my list? We shall see.

Stay tuned!