To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.
You must write every single day of your life.
You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.
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.
I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.
I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.
May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories.
Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.
(Ray Bradbury, "How to Be Madder Than Captain Ahab." Quoted by William Safire and Leonard Safir in Good Advice on Writing. Simon & Schuster, 1992)
More Writers on Writing:
- Writers on Writing: The Myth of Inspiration
- Writers on Rewriting
- What Is the Secret of Good Writing?
Image: Ray Bradbury
Comments
My comment concerns Bradbury’s comment ” that if you
want to write, you must write everyday.” While that might be true if you want to be a professional writer, what if you write for the sole purpose of captyring a thought ? It is not fair for the exception to make rules for the ordinary. Bradbury’s comment about writing may distance me from writing, yet I sometimes enjoy it, and would not like to be distanced from something I enjoy.