Ultimately, to be a writer, you have to get your work done. If that doesn’t work, shut up and drink your gin. It’s easy to let yourself get caught up in the reading and talking about writing. One of the hardest things about being a writer is actually doing the writing. Yes, stay abreast with the conventions and trends within your chosen niche, but there also is much to learn from authors who have mastered certain techniques, even if they are writing in other genres.ĭo you love beautiful literary prose but want to write science fiction? Read literary fiction and bring that style over, much like Ursula K. In one line! You must study these things to be a good writer.” She has the remarkable ability to give you atmosphere, character and motion in a single line. Study the Masters of the CraftĬonnected to the previous advice is the idea of studying other writers: Take that time to improve not only your writing but your life, as well.

If you struggle to fit reading into your life, this also gives you a built-in time to read. One of the most things inspiring about this advice is the idea that it encourages you to read broadly outside “your” genre. But that means that every night then, before you go to bed, you’re stuffing your head with one poem, one short story, one essay…” On politics, analyzing literature, pick your own. Read the essays of Aldous Huxley, read Lauren Eisley, great anthropologist… I want you to read essays in every field. From various fields: archaeology, zoology, biology, all the great philosophers of time, comparing them. But one poem a night, one short story a night, one essay a night, for the next 1,000 nights. Read the great poets, go back and read Shakespeare, read Alexander Pope, read Robert Frost. Now if you want to kid yourself and write lines that look like poems, go ahead and do it, but you’ll go nowhere. Okay, then read one poem a night from the vast history of poetry. That’ll take you ten minutes, 15 minutes.

For the next thousand nights, before you go to bed every night, read one short story. “… I’ll give you a program to follow every night, very simple program. In fact, almost every interview I have read with an author, bestselling or not, says something along the lines of “read broadly and often.” But Bradbury takes it even further and prescribed specifics to this advice: The idea that writers need to be readers is not new. In fact, he even wrote the book “Zen and the Art of Writing.” Between that and numerous interviews he gave on the subject, there is a plethora of advice to discover. He also was incredibly generous in doling out writing advice.

Ray Bradbury was one of the most prolific and talented authors in speculative fiction history.

Zen and the art of writing ray bradbury