WRITE ON FIRE!
“Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these two words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were to name the most imortant items in a writer’s make-up, the things that shape his material 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. ”
– Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
Ray Bradbury is by far one of my favorite authors. As a matter of a fact, if it were not for his amazing short stories, especially ‘The Illustrated Man’, I would quite possibly not be a writer today.
There are so many things to love about Ray’s stories; the way that he could grab a person (at any age) and take him to distant planets of amazement, and terror, or staying right here on planet earth in its final minuets. I remember staying awake at night, hiding under my blanket with my pen light, reading Ray’s stories. As a writer, he is an amazing example of what it is that I would love to be most like.
As writer’s, we have the wonderful ability to literally change someone’s day, week, month, and possibly life.
Especially, now, in times of financial uncertainty, war on the horizon, and depression on the rise, PEOPLE NEED AN ESCAPE! People need a moment of relief, a departure from stress, exodus from the land of the norm….and we, the writers, artists, have the incredible ability to offer that literary boat to Elsewhere.
Not only did I learn a lot from Ray about how to create an amazingly believable house of fiction, but I learned that writers must be accountable to the spirit of the Muse, or the creative art. He often says things like “Write what you love” or “What that story that you want to read”.
We as writers can get so caught up in our endeavors to become financially supported by our writings, that it is easy to research the market and write what we hope they will buy. But, as I have heard Ray say in interviews, and in writing, “Don’t write for the Market, write for you.” Write what you are passionate about. Write stories that you can not help but pick up your self time and time again.
Think about that perfect story that you are dying to read, but have not found yet…now do yourself a real favor and write it. Markets will come. Ha ha…if you write it, Markets will come. Have you looked at the 2009 Writer’s Market yet…it is three times bigger than my Bible! The Market is huge, there are people that love all kids of writing.
You’re a writer. Be a writer, a real writer, an honest writer. Write what you love. As Ray say, “Look to your zest, see to your gusto!” Write the stories that make you laugh while you type, stop at times to dab your tears, and give yourself a standing ovation when you finish. Make it count, every word, every sentence.
Get passionate about what you write, light yourself on fire and blaze a literary trail into your world.
Write, Write, Write!
SamTheWriter
Static: Not to be confused with:,
AShotOfLiteraryCaffeine 