This past summer I revisited some Bradbury favorites including Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Reminded me how quickly I’m intoxicated by his prose. A few days ago I pulled my foxed and dog-eared copy of Zen in the Art of Writing (Amazon) from the shelves for a writerly shot in the arm. I recently began a new book project. Figured a great time to tap back into this wellspring as well as submit myself to his fervent cattle prodding, his insistence to get out there and do things, man, here, now:
– You’ve got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.
– I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.
– Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.
As both a writer and a biomimic, you can imagine how the following passage lifted my cheeks:
“Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jump, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next—life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was—a whisper.
“What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.
“In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink-blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, live with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspout outside your grandparents’ window long ago. Be dandelion wine in the ketchup bottle capped and placed with an inked inscription: June morning, first day of Summer, 1923. Summer 1926, Fireworks Night. 1927: Last Day of Summer. LAST OF THE DANDELIONS, Oct. 1st.
“And out of all this, wind up with your first success as a writer, at $20 a story, in Weird Tales.
“How do you commence to start to begin an almost new kind of writing, to terrify and scare?
“You stumble into it, mostly. You don’t know what you’re doing, and suddenly, it’s done. You don’t set out to reform a certain kind of writing. It evolves out of your own life and night scares. Suddenly you look around and see that you have done something almost fresh.”
– Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing, Bantam Books (1990).
Love that.
Flashback, and two scoops of context … Since the last time I read Bradbury’s Zen, probably a handful of years ago, I’ve deep-dived a reconnection with my lifelong love for applied sciences. Sure, I played soccer, football, and tennis competitively as a kid, but also got a sugar high off of competing in physics and chemistry bees, on weekends, no less. Also spent the first 2.5 of my undergrad years studying microbiology, zoology, and all the associated fixtures (genetics, organic chemistry, advanced calculus, etc.). Until I found myself at a career path crossroads—lab coated MD, or brand positioning Mad Man? Following Yogi Berra’s oft cited words of wisdom, I took the fork in the road.
I ended out with a B.S. (some say literally) in Marketing; eventually got an MBA. But remember that fork I took. As it happens, I’ve spent most of my career marketing innovative companies, products, and services, many of them in the life sciences including biotech, big pharma, behavioral psychology, several angles on wellness/wellbeing, and my favorite, biomimicry (innovation inspired by nature).
So what a nice rediscovery … Ray Bradbury prescribing that writers should try their hands at biomimicry.