Writing like a Martian, the Bradbury way

While dithering recently over whether to register for the Roanoke Writers Conference, I checked the list of presenters. There were some fine ones, writers and instructors I already knew and appreciated. And then there was Sam Weller, the authorized biographer of Ray Bradbury. 

Sam Weller

I spent my middle school and high school years devouring everything my small-town school libraries contained of Ray Bradbury writings, and still check for newer works. (Bradbury died in 2012, long past my middle school years.) So, yes, I pulled out my credit card and signed up for Roanoke, to learn from a teacher who had learned from Bradbury.

The prolific Bradbury is perhaps most famous for his volume of linked short stories, The Martian Chronicles. Or should that be, most famous for Fahrenheit 451? Or The Illustrated Man, or -- well too many other books and stories to name. (Bradbury’s official site mentions hundreds of short stories, nearly fifty books, as well as poems, essays, screen plays, teleplays, operas. If you can name it, Bradbury wrote it.)

I’ll provide a sampling of the tips Weller learned from his 12 years of association with Bradbury. But what most struck me from Weller’s two-hour creative writing class (which included some of Bradbury’s own writing prompts) was Bradbury’s dedication to his craft. Unable to afford college after he graduated from high school during the Great Depression, Bradbury became an autodidact, haunting the public library. He would later declare, Weller said, that “the public library is the only university that matters.” It’s a statement still worth considering even in these days of the Internet. 

image: wikipedia

Bradbury’s method of teaching himself to write fiction was simple but grueling: write one story every week for a year, deciding that it couldn’t be possible to write 52 bad stories. In the first year of this experiment, he sold three stories. The next year six, then nine. Five years after finishing high school, he became a fulltime writer.

(Considering how much emphasis current writing classes put on beginnings – although I’ll have more to say about that in a later post – one of the advantages of short story writing, Weller said, is that “you learn how to end things.”)

I may not be able to keep up the story-a-week schedule with NaNoWriMo looming tomorrow, but Bradbury’s suggestions resonate for any writing form:

1)     Find a community of writers (Lucky us – NaNoWriMo brings out writing groups like earthworms after a thunderstorm.)

2)     Write from a place of emotional truth – your truth (It’s not writing what you know, Weller said, it’s writing what you’ve felt.)

3)     Stay immersed in art – read books, poems, essays, listen to music, watch movies, go to the theater, to museums – what Bradbury called “stuffing your mind”

4)     Develop a routine – “all you really need is two hours a day”

5)     Write about your interests and passions, write about things you think are cool. Write about what you love. “Can you imagine,” Bradbury said, “if I’d lost my childhood fascinations with Mars?”

6)     Write for you – the first person you write for should be yourself

7)     Think beyond clichés and tropes

8)  Ignore discouragement 

9) Let your stories by written by your subconscious, write them quickly. ("Finish things! Try it! Stop being so damn precious!")

10) Generate lots of ideas until one comes along that won’t leave you alone

By now, aren't you wondering why an image of a pensive young woman illustrates this post?

Weller’s exercises for us at Roanoke are ones we can try in the coming NaNoWriMo, or all year round.  Edward Hopper’s 1927 painting “Automat” was one of those pieces of art that resonated with Bradbury (see #3 above). Bradbury favored pictures of solitary women, famously including Andrew Wyeth’s eerie “Christina’s World.” But choose any work of art that appeals to you as your own writing prompt.

A second prompt is to make a list of five or more things that interest you (see #5 above). “Don’t be afraid of being weird!” Weller urged us. “Embrace the weird!”

Bradbury also loved to make lists of nouns (file cabinet drawers full of lists, Weller said, all starting with the article “the.” For your final prompt, list five to 10 nouns, as diverse as possible. And yes, start each item on the list with “the”. 

(“If you don’t know where to start, just start describing the noun for a paragraph,” Weller said. “Then bring in characters to interact with the object. Immediately, a story will appear.”)

Mix and match prompts to taste, add a dash of weirdness, a heaping cup of determination, and see what magic happens.