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    Zen in the Art of Writing
    Zen in the Art of Writing
    Zen in the Art of Writing
    Audiobook3 hours

    Zen in the Art of Writing

    Written by Ray Bradbury

    Narrated by Jim Frangione

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    "Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a land mine. The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!" Zest. Gusto. Curiosity. These are the qualities every writer must have, as well as a spirit of adventure. In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing. Here are practical tips on the art of writing from a master of the craft-everything from finding original ideas to developing your own voice and style-as well as the inside story of Bradbury's own remarkable career as a prolific author of novels, stories, poems, films, and plays. Zen In The Art Of Writing is more than just a how-to manual for the would-be writer: it is a celebration of the act of writing itself that will delight, impassion, and inspire the writer in you. In it, Bradbury encourages us to follow the unique path of our instincts and enthusiasms to the place where our inner genius dwells, and he shows that success as a writer depends on how well you know one subject: your own life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 15, 2018
    ISBN9781501981753
    Author

    Ray Bradbury

    In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. An Emmy Award winner for his teleplay The Halloween Tree and an Academy Award nominee, he was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, among many honors.

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    Reviews for Zen in the Art of Writing

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      A fantastic collection, I love his writing style and ghe narrator does a great job of getting the cadence and rhythm perfect.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant advice on drawing on the subconscious to create art.
    • 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."
    • 5/5
      Excellent introduction to the writing life by Ray Bradbury. This series of essays covers a wide period of writing. I have never read much of Bradbury, but this work was recommended by a friend, and now I have number of Bradbury's works that are on my reading list...Highly Recommended...SLT
    • 5/5
      Very inspiring! Keep in mind that this is a collection of essays on writing. Bradbury gives so much inspiration and you feel his passion of the craft. It truly makes you want to grab a notebook and start jotting down your own titles for story inspiration to bloom from. I’ve now bought my own copy of this audiobook from first listening here. Thank you for having this title!
    • 5/5
      A very practical and inspiring read for the struggling writer.
    • 2/5
      This short collection of essays shows a first-published date of Nov 1973, but each essay was individually published in a variety of magazines or journals, ranging from 1961 through 1986. I am a fan of Ray Bradbury’s and I initially found it interesting to read about where his story ideas came from. I particularly liked the image of a young (child? teen?) Bradbury keeping a notebook or journal where he jotted random words that struck his fancy, only to have those words percolate in his subconscious mind for years until Voila! a story idea was born. The word might be “baby” or “skeleton” or “carnival” or “dandelion.” More than anything I get the impression that he was open to anything. He spent his life observing and absorbing as much as possible to fuel his creative engine. And while he is probably best known as a writer of science fiction, he penned love stories and even wrote the screenplay for Moby Dick (yes, the movie starring Gregory Peck as Ahab). All that being said, and despite my liking his works of fiction, I found this collection dissatisfying as a whole. The fact that the collected essays spanned a couple of decades of his thoughts / writings probably didn’t help. And unlike Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, this work did nothing to improve my own “reading” skill.
    • 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
      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.
    • 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.
    • 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!
    • 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
      Excellent.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.)

    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.