Surly Questions: JM Bell

The triumphant return of Surly Questions! When JM Bell isn’t writing hyper-articulate comments on Google+ or blogs, he blogs at Start Your Novel, a rich resource for writing tips and inspiration. He was kind enough to take the time to answer some questions — thanks, JM!

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

At the age of 11 I discovered metaphor and started writing poetry. I wrote poems for more than a decade — a few of them I turned into song lyrics, as I fronted three bands for about seven years. At one point it became clear to me that I wasn’t much of a poet, but writing was pretty much a part of my identity, so I started experimenting with short stories. All of them are trunk stories, deliberately weird and unpublishable. That’s OK, though, they were practice.

When I was little I’d see writers on TV or hear them talk on the radio, and oh, what superb creatures they appeared to be. Learned and old and sage. Who’s that man?, I’d ask my grandmother. That gentleman’s a writer, she’d say. (She was a rich man’s daughter, my grandma. Brought up to be a lady and little else. She gave piano lessons for a living.) And I’d go ooh and ahh with my little mouth.

So I can’t tell you when I realized what I wanted, or whether I made a conscious decision. I started writing before I knew what I was doing.

Why did you start startyournovel.com?

All these ideas were floating in my head and I didn’t know what to do with them. Couldn’t turn them all into stories. I knew I wanted to blog, but had trouble finding a topic and then it hit me — I should take advantage of my story ideas. They were my unique value proposition, if you’ll pardon my using a marketing term. I was disappointed with most of the writing prompts out there and decided to do something different.

Have you, in fact, started your novel?

Two, rather. The first survived two exploratory drafts and a complete reimagining in terms of genre, but I let it go after I realized it was about an unsolved issue in my life. The second, well, my protagonist was basically Red Sonja in an imaginary Southeast Asia. All of the other characters found her very exotic, and I had a couple of viable antagonists but no plot.

Right now I’m looking into material for a new project – just gathering stuff, really. Not much I can say about it except that I’m going to avoid old mistakes and make new ones. Probably.

Has your translation work informed your writing in any way?

Definitely. When I started out 10 years ago, I had no idea of the challenges some business and legal documents would pose. And I’m not just talking about research — many people in banking and public administration draft memos, reports or articles for the in-house magazine because they’re saddled with the task, not because they enjoy writing.

I’ve had to handle stuff that defies understanding, which is great practice for a writer: turning convoluted syntax into something that flows. Language for actual humans, you know? And you learn to be less poetic. One of the reasons I could never make it page 10 of Something Wicked This Way Comes is that the imagery is so profuse and over the top, you lose sight of the story. Too many similes ruin your macaroni.

You pick up a thing or two when you translate internal surveys for large companies. You get a glimpse into the workings of rather complex organizations without actually being there under the same kind of pressure as the employees. When you translate employee feedback for company bosses, that’s when you get to grips with the disconnect between truth and propaganda. There’s a number of corporations out there that would like to become their employees’ new religion.

And there I am as an outside observer and enabler, because I’m helping to convey these corporate gospels, as it were. But the fact is I get this kind of work through agencies, I don’t specifically go out and ask for it. Doing work that is sometimes at odds with my values has made me understand that survival is a complicated game. Lots of gray areas.

What about your photography?

Writing has informed my photography, not the other way around. …I think. What I believe is that all successful photos are narrative. The most enduring ones all tell stories and evoke artistic tradition. Just look at the work Sebastiao Salgado did with children in refugee camps. Those apparently simple portraits have a depth to them, a crushing surfeit of emotion. You don’t have to know much about the children, you will feel moved anyway, because each portrait is a thing of wonder.

Good photography is visual literature, and good literature is photography-in-writing. Writing and photography aren’t so different after all. I like surreal imagery and people-free landscapes, which is why so many of my stabs at fiction have started with weirdos living in the middle of nowhere.

You like to inspire others… do you have any stories about inspiring someone?

Once I met this guy in a bar who’d seen my band play live when he was 14 and apparently we blew him away. He decided to grow his hair long there and then, and start a metal band of his own. Now, the guy told me this at the age of 26 and he still remembered me.

You regularly post features on “what can [X] teach you about writing”… what one  character or author has taught you the most about writing?

Batman!

No, I’m kidding. Getting to grips with Samuel Beckett ripped my eyes open. His work illustrates all too well the rewards and pitfalls of postmodernism. In terms of sheer daring it would have to be W.S. Burroughs, however. Burroughs managed to shock Beckett at a dinner party when he explained his cut-up technique. Suppose I take your Molloy and a pair of scissors, said Burroughs, and then I cut up the pages into tiny bits, I cut through the pages until I get the text to say what I want it to. Samuel Beckett was flabbergasted.

Beckett, though — respect to the man who can start a novel with

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Philip K. Dick, Gene Wolfe, Kurt Vonnegut and Ursula LeGuin are definitely influences. Dick knows how to portray people on the verge of total collapse — people about to lose everything, including their sense of self. People dumped into a world that isn’t even cruel but just cruelly absurd. PKD more or less converted to Valentinian Gnosticism late in life, so he deploys his characters in worlds that are ambiguous and deceptive for a reason. Dick taught me to write from a position of doubt.

Now, LeGuin, she writes beautiful human beings and her universe is more or less optimistic. She’s a genius when it comes to introspection; she takes you where the character is at her most honest and vulnerable and you want to keep reading to learn more. I don’t know how else to explain this, but with certain authors, you start to read their books and you feel at home inside the story. That’s what my favorite authors taught me and teach me still, that you should make the reader feel at home.

What has been the most rewarding thing about connecting with other writers through  social media?

The feeling that we’re an ecosystem. Things are a lot more competitive among photographers, believe you me.

The jokes.

A conversation that starts about Freud turns into a discussion of beards.

What’s not to like? It’s been a wonderful experience so far. My only regret is not starting the blog sooner.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you ever received?

“Receive” may not be the most fitting verb in this case. Ezra Pound says that, if you want to write a novel, you should read one that you admire. Of course Pound meant you should study it and dissect it every which way. He was the kind of writer that doesn’t make concessions and one hell of an editor. There’s a facsimile edition of his work on Eliot’s poem, The Wasteland, and you see the guy wasn’t playing around. He went at it hammer and tongs and turned The Wasteland into a memorable poem. But I digress.

I couldn’t go without mentioning James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure. It was the second book on craft I picked up and it helped me identify several weaknesses in my writing. There’s a good tip in there: “Maintain the tension in the story up to the last possible moment.”

Are there any exciting projects in your future?

Right now I feel I should hop on a plane, go to Switzerland and check out the Giger museum. No, it’s not a writing project, but something I owe myself, having admired Giger’s work for years.

What are your top five “desert island” books?

In no particular order: The Collected Poems of Hart Crane, The Bodhicaryavatara by Santideva, Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, some Wordsworth, some Emily Dickinson. If I could add a sixth, it’d be John Donne’s sonnets. A seventh? Kafka’s short stories.

On Writing Strong (Female) Characters

Every once in a while, the question makes its way around the writing circles: how to write strong female characters?

Well, I’m a guy, so I probably shouldn’t be the first person you ask. In fact, definitely not. But, because I’m a guy, here comes my opinion anyway. (Right away with the gender stereotypes — buckle up!)

Often, some wiseacre will reference the acidic, sexist crack from Jack Nicholson’s character from the movie As Good As It Gets: “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.” This is best used ironically, or not at all, as it’s not really constructive. It’s also wildly sexist. So there’s your example of What Not to Do, I guess.

Also on the list of smartass responses is this comic strip by Kate Beaton, which takes a swing at the tropes some writers seem to think make female characters strong, but actually really don’t. (I particularly like the lengthy justification of the boob armor, which I’ve seen in many an online argument about revealing superhero costumes.)

OH JOHN RINGO NO

If you look at your typical urban fantasy cover, the answer seems to be “crop top, big knife, and tattoos.” This is a pretty hoary complaint by this time, and I feel a little self-conscious even making it, but seriously, show me a bad-ass vampire hunter with her midriff covered, and, well… I’ll be mildly surprised. Not that this is a bad thing in itself, beyond being something of a cliché at this point. But it does seem to reinforce the idea that “violence = strength.” Not that I mind ass-kicking characters, but groin-punching is a behavior, not a personality trait. The most iconic modern-fantasy female of them all, Buffy Summers, much more going for her than just beating monsters senseless.

The question’s also been kicking around the blogosphere recently. Oh, I just said blogosphere. I’m sorry. Anyway, for example, “The Fantasy Feminist” by Fantasy Faction (say that five times fast), points out some of the most common gaffes in writing female characters:

These issues are, at their core, character issues. The problem isn’t the warrior or promiscuous personality in itself; rather, it’s the idea that to be a strong character, a woman must act like a man or shun feminine things or use her body to manipulate people or some other misconception. And even then, it’s really only a problem if the writer believes that the character must act that way to be strong. If the character believes it, then the writer has taken a first step toward creating a multi-layered person.

Michel Vaillancourt, author of The Sauder Diaries: By Any Other Name, relates how he carefully researched and constructed his female characters. Vaillancourt sums up the problem neatly: “Within our North American pop culture, we have built a mystic divide between the principle genders.” What’s most interesting about this post is the mixed reaction Vaillancourt got from female readers  — proving that there is no One True Way when it comes to writing characters, nor should there be.

My favorite answer to this question, however, came from a recent Google+ thread in which a writer asked, “how do you write female characters?” and someone answered:

1) I think of a character.
2) I make them female.

I love this answer, because I think it gets to the heart of the issue: gender plays very little part in what makes a good or strong character. So why start with gender at all?

What It Takes

So what does it take to make a (female) character tick?

1) Agency. The character makes things happen. They move the plot forward. They make choices — even if they are bad ones — that propel the story. They make a difference. They do not wait for the story to happen to them. They do not wait to be rescued. They do not let somebody else handle the hard stuff. If your character is sitting around the house gnawing their knuckles and hoping everything will work out okay, you need to punt them into the middle of the action.

2) Relatability. A character doesn’t have to be likeable, but they do need to have distinct goals and desires  — in short, the things that make us human. Female characters in particular seem prone to fall outside these boundaries — they’re presented as mysterious, otherworldly creatures, their actions random and without reason — basically, all the worst parts of some stand-up comic’s outdated “women want the toilet seat down” routine.

If you’re putting this kind of thing in your writing, please, for all our sakes, knock it off. Women aren’t magical creatures from another planet. Stop writing them like that. Give them human hopes, fears, and motivations. It’s not that hard. A female character shouldn’t be measured by her sexuality, or the cut of her clothing, or how many people she can wheel-kick in sixty seconds to prove she doesn’t need a man. Violence doesn’t make a character strong. Neither does sex. Not by themselves, anyway.

3) Integrity. Look at the list of characters in your latest work. Describe each character in a single, short sentence. If the words “love interest” appear anywhere in that sentence, chances are your character is a bit crap. Look, it’s nothing personal. I’m guilty of this. I’ve created the character who exists only to be dated, desired, or unceremoniously boinked. Is there a place for such characters in a story? Maybe — if, as Michel Vaillancourt says, they’re strictly a plot device. But you could probably do better. If your character’s sole motivation is to be someone’s girlfriend, you can’t pretend they’re well-rounded and still keep a straight face.

Characters must also have integrity of motivation — not from stereotypical gender expectations. A common example of this is Ripley going back to save the cat in Alien. I’ll be the first one to say that while Ripley in Aliens is a great example of doing a female character right, the first Alien drops the ball in a few places. Do you think Hudson or Hicks or one of the other badass space marines would have gone back for the cat? Yeah, me neither. Chances are they wouldn’t strip down to their underwear in the final reel either, but whatever. My point is, characters should make decisions based on their character — it doesn’t matter if they’re bad decisions, so long as the reasoning isn’t “well, she’s a woman and women are so crazy so she did the crazy thing.”

Is That All?

Well, no.  Because I won’t pretend for one second that there’s one true formula for writing characters of any gender. People are different. And, like it or not, while men and women might not be from other planets, they’re not identical either. They process emotions differently. They’re shaped by different societal forces.

There’s a danger in writing against stereotypes without going deeper than just defying the stereotype. A female character can ask her boyfriend to open the pickle jar, or hate taking out the trash, or follow her intuition when her brain is telling her a different story. That doesn’t magically make a character weak. What makes them weak is defining them only by that sort of thing. But take that too far in the other direction, and you may end up with a bunch of stereotypical male traits… the proverbial “man with breasts.” You’ve essentially traded one set of cliches for another at that point.

So, as usual, the answer is somewhere in the middle. The most memorable female protagonists (the ones that come up constantly in conversations like these: Buffy, Ripley, etc.) show us that they can feel terror and charge into peril anyway. That they can love, or grieve over love lost, without pining forever in their room. That they can hold their own without being invincible.

“Strong” does not mean “flawless,” because invulnerable people with no weaknesses are the most boring characters imaginable. There’s a big difference between characters flaws and a character who’s just written poorly. To quote from the blog 42nd Wave Feminist:

I think many of Mr. Whedon’s critics think that because he is a professed feminist who supports Equality Now and has been honored by them, and because he enjoys writing strong female characters, that somehow every female character he writes should fit some sort of feminist ideal. I think that’s a ridiculous expectation and would most likely result in colossally boring television.

This is a complicated issue, and I could probably go on for several more paragraphs, but I’m not going to. In short, if you want to write good characters, then start with character — not with gender. Write human beings, not stereotypes or sex object. It’s not rocket science.

Your turn. Tell me your thoughts. I’d love to hear them.

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Writing at the Speed of WTF

Ripley's 0059
Ripley’s Believe It or God Will Spear You in the Face With a Metal Pole, I Swear I Am Not Kidding

For me, being a writer is sometimes akin to being a submarine commander — long stretches of inactivity punctuated by moments of sheer panic.

I’m not a Type A writer by nature. There are days when I’ll do just about anything to get out of writing. I’ll clean my desk. I’ll clean the toilet. I’ll clean the house. Hell, I’ll clean the neighbor’s house, while they’re not there, and then enjoy the panic and outrage that ensues from such well-meaning vandalism. Officer, someone came in here and tidied up and I can’t find anything! Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto!

The madness doesn’t end there. I’ll alphabetize my DVDs. Or my books. Do you have any idea how many books I have? Well, you’re reading a writing blog, I guess you probably do. Chances are you’re nodding your head right now, thinking of your own bookshelves and saying “yeah, you poor dope, better you than me — oh wait.”

I’ve considered buying a bicycle just so I could blow the tire on it, and then say to myself, hey, I’d love to write but I got this bicycle tire and chances are it ain’t gonna change itself. And then I’ll have a cup of coffee or two and watch the tire, just in case it does change itself and I have to call Ripley’s Believe It or Not. And I spend some time looking up the number for Ripley’s Believe It or Not, since I’m nothing if not well-prepared. I also look into some means of arming myself, should the now-sentient bicycle tire be out for vengeance. And so I construct a rudimentary lathe–

Well, the point is, some days I try to avoid writing.

Most writers know how that goes, even the disciplined ones. The myriads of whys and hows barely matter; unless you get some words on the page in the allotted time, you’ve flunked your daily test as a writer. And I will not chide you. Not today. If you can relate at all, I’m sure you’ve devised much more scathing criticisms than I could possibly level at you. You lazy bum. How much Ace of Cakes can one person watch? Do you call that research? Do you? Yeah, whatever, I’ve got my eye on you.

But then there are those other days, the ones few talk about. The days when you cannot possibly write enough.

I don’t mean the jacked-up rush of inspiration mode, where you chug three Red Bulls and stay up for forty-eight hours, writing until you can physically see the arc of your plot like a luminous vibrating parabola. I don’t recommend that anyway. It hurts. I mean the days where feel the keen sting of procrastination and what it’s cost you.

For me, those days usually come after I get some sort of great reader feedback, or attention from someone whose opinion I  value, or even a  great blog comment. Also, when one of my fellow indie authors releases a new book. There’s a sudden rush of activity in my email and on Goodreads and Twitter and suddenly I’m thinking: what am I doing? Must write faster! And then I throw the sandwich I’m eating out the window, because I’m a hardcore writer of writerliness and who has time to eat? Only to discover I didn’t actually open the window, and there’s now an apocalyptic Rorschach blot of turkey and mustard sprayed across the glass, and I’m back to cleaning the house.

Don’t throw food, is the moral there. It does not make for good writing, except for this one anecdote just now, which is too good to be true anyway. I’d never throw away a good sandwich like that.

Writer's Block 1
Photo credit: OkayCityNate

But dubious and fictitious food-hurling farragoes aside, there is very real danger to the “all or nothing” approach to writing. It can make you impatient. It can make you skip things like editing, proofreading, or devising an ending, or finding out what happened to that missing character you added in Chapter Fourteen. I think we all know at least one indie writer who has clearly released a book before it was ready. No one wants their Amazon reviews to be all about how they misspelled “reprobate”. No one is fooled by re-releasing your own novel with “2.0” or “Director’s Cut” slapped on the cover. Pump the brakes and finish it right the first time. A sloppy, half-finished book is a great way to ensure your readers turn tail and never come back. A good reputation can take months or years to build, and a handful of typos to ruin. Don’t blow it.

The need to see some sort of progress, right now, to write All the Books — well, it can lead to burnout and bad decisions. So I guess it’s more like being a drunk than a submarine commander. Or, possibly, a drunken submarine commander. Which, incidentally, is the subject of my next book. I’m trying to come up with a killer title, perhaps Land Whoa!

And that’s why you slow down and think before acting on your impulses.

Finally, thank you to everyone who left such awesome comments on the previous entry. You guys are truly wonderful.

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How to Blog Like a Total Hypocrite

Cover of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
Consider the lilies of the goddamn field, or look to Delmar here as your paradigm of hope.

There’s a scene from the Coen Bros. movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? where the main characters — themselves fugitives from the law — pick up a lone hitchhiker, a young blues guitarist named Tommy Johnson (based on the famous Robert Johnson). When they ask Tommy why he was at the crossroads, he told them he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the ability to “play this here guitar real good.” In astonishment, another character asks “for that you traded your everlasting soul?” To which Tommy replies: “Well, I wasn’t using it.”

For the past couple weeks, that’s a bit how I’ve felt about my writing.

To explain. I started this blog for a number of reasons: to connect with other writers and readers, to share what I knew, and to learn from others. Anywhere you read blogging advice, you’ll read this mantra: share your expertise. For the most part, readers don’t care what you had for lunch, or that killer hangnail, or how you’ve tried nothing and you’re all out of ideas. They want some utility. They want some meat, or they’ll just click away.

About two months ago, my life got busy. These things happen. Illness, work woes, you find out your downstairs neighbor is a vampire and next thing you know you’re schlepping it to Home Depot to get some lumber for stakes and you find out the wife donated all your good knives to Goodwill because “six knives is enough for anybody.” Whatever, woman, we’ve got a Nosferatu downstairs. Do you want to get bit? Is that your problem? Next you’ll be telling me you donated my steel collar and leather pants — no! I told you, those were for vampire hunting!

Well, anyway. The point is, I stopped writing. Neglected it entirely. And there’s only so much you can say about the subject once you’ve stopped, especially on a blog devoted to the subject. “Hello, and welcome to my writing blog of writing. Speaking of writing, who’s doing any? Not me, that’s for damn sure. So, who wants to talk about pancake syrup?”

Of course, one could argue that I could still blog about writing, even if I wasn’t doing any at the moment, and so that’s what I did. But it started to make me uncomfortable. I felt like a Mennonite trying to sell iPads. “So, here’s this thing… you probably want this. Somebody does, anyway, God knows why, but… I don’t know, it has apps, or the wi-fis, and… some birds are angry for some reason… look, just buy it so I can get out of here.”

Cover of "Superman III (Deluxe Edition)"
Deluxe Edition. Over three times the suck!

What’s the point of dispensing advice? I wasn’t using it. I began to feel that if I wrote one more motivational article, my personality would split, and I’d turn into an evil doppelgänger of myself, flicking peanuts at the mirrors at my local pub before staggering off to throw tires at myself in a junkyard. Yes, a Superman III reference. That’s what we’re down to now.

The point is, I felt like a hypocrite. And so the blog stalled out. My presence on Twitter became notable only for its rarity, as friends and followers invoked arcane chants to summon me, like Yog-Sothoth, from the abyssal depths, so that I might live and tweet again. Mostly by calling me short or grumpy. Which is very unfair. I am not the least bit short.

I’d love to tell you that I did something romantically self-destructive during my blogging hiatus, like living on Scotch and cigarettes while I cranked out a gritty tale of a writer living on Scotch and cigarettes while he cranked out a gritty tale. Or possibly reading 50 Shades of Gray. Grey? Gray? Anyway, I did neither of those things. I mostly watched a lot of television, which is just the regular, stupid kind of self-destructive. No cachet to it.

But finally, I realized I was being foolish. I started this blog because I wanted to talk about writing, not to fulfill some holy calling. I’ve never had a desire to become a guru of any kind. Yeah, blogging is about sharing your expertise, but it’s also about sharing yourself, your thoughts, your personality. I’m not some robotic dispenser of motivational platitudes. I’m just me. And if I’m not writing, well, there’s a simple solution to that, isn’t there? We must remember that we are human, and as humans, we dream, and when we dream, we dream of money. Wait. That isn’t the message I wanted to convey at all.

In summary, this is a very long-winded way of saying I’m back. So! Speaking of writing, who’s doing any?

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Be Inspired Blog Hop

Cover by Tracy McCusker at http://scienceofdeduction.org/

I’ve been tagged by Bullish Ink to participate in the Be Inspired Blog Hop by Vicky Orians. I’m a little late to the party on this one, but I hope you’ll enjoy reading anyway. Here are the rules:

1. Answer the following ten questions about a book you’re working on or have completed.

2. Tag five other writers, making sure you put links in your blog post so we can all hop over and see their answers.

3. Thank the writer who tagged you. (Thank you, Ruth!)

I’m going to pass on tagging five other writers, because I think the writers I most want to hear from have already participated. That, and I feel a bit like I’m coming in with the appetizers after the party’s broken up and everyone’s gone home.

The questions:

1. What is the title of your book?

Orison.

2. Where did you get the idea for the book?

I was on a heist-movie kick (Ocean’s Eleven and the like), and I wanted to write a “fantasy heist” novel. That isn’t really the novel I ended up writing, but that was the seed of the idea. The good news is, I can still use that “heist” angle in the future, although I’m not sure I actually ever will.

3. What genre would your book fall under?

Fantasy. Or sword-and-sorcery, if you like.

4. Who would you choose to play your character(s) in a movie rendition?

Story – Emmy Rossum. She does “scruffy” very well. She also does “fearless” quite well, and I think she’d convey Story’s boldness.
Mar Dunnac – Temuera Morrison. He needs more ass-kicking roles, and Dunnac’s a mercenary soldier.
Wrynn – Martin Freeman. I’d watch him read the phone book, and I think he’d fit Wrynn’s intelligent but slightly hapless nature very well.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Oh gosh. I’m terrible at these, I’m afraid.

In a city ruled by unstable magic, six rivals struggle over an artifact that could shift the balance of power — not just in the city, but the world.

6. Is your book published or represented?

Nothing’s signed yet, but I’ve had an offer.

7. How long did it take you to write?

A month for the rough draft, several more months for the edits.

8.What other books within your genre would you compare it to?

That’s a tough one. Probably Matthew Stover’s Heroes Die or Blade of Tyshalle. Maybe the Mistborn books, although I’ve only read the first one.

9. Which authors inspired you to write this book?

Again, I’d probably have to say Matthew Stover. I think he’s a criminally underrated writer. He’s done some of the most hard-bitten, fast-paced fantasy out there, and I wish his books were more widely read. Also, Glen Cook. The Black Company series informed a lot of Orison‘s voice.

10.Tell us anything else that might pique our interest in your book.

While Orison started out as a “heist” story, it eventually became about power — what it does to people, and how different personalities handle the ability to change the world around them. I think I’ve created six distinct, colorful characters and I had a wonderful time setting them into conflict with one another.

Oh, and the book has a female protagonist who doesn’t wear scanty clothing, doesn’t get captured, doesn’t fall in love, doesn’t get rescued by a man, Because I think we need more of that sort of thing.

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Rest in Peace, Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)

Photo of Ray Bradbury.
Photo of Ray Bradbury. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ray Bradbury passed away today at the age of 91.

It’s no secret that Bradbury was one of my literary heroes. His book, Zen in the Art of Writing, is the subject of my first blog post on Surly Muse. He’s high on the list of authors I quote most often. Zen is one of the few writing books I re-read, almost yearly, to rekindle the fires of inspiration. Bradbury shaped my entire way of thinking when it comes to writing.

There are others far more capable of recounting his legendary influence, so I won’t attempt to recap his lifetime of achievement here.

I will only say this.

As writers, we yearn to touch the lives of others, to give of ourselves in the hope that our words will have some effect — on the world, on the market, on a single soul — and in the giving, we are ourselves enriched and made whole. No one understood this like Bradbury, who said: ” if I let a day go by without writing, I grow uneasy. Two days and I am in tremor. Three and I suspect lunacy. Four and I might as well be a hog, suffering the flux in a wallow. An hour’s writing is tonic.” He embraced the joy and necessity of writing, of the frantic need that drives us all to put words on the page, and the power those words can have.

Ray, I owe you more than I could ever possibly repay. Possibly everything. You will be missed.

Thank you.

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