Ray Bradbury

What We Love vs. What We Profess to Love: A Parable

Hey folks, Characters have a great deal to teach us. A thought struck me this morning as I considered a character, a genderless writer whose once often-professed passion was writing. The character-writer’s productivity used to bear that out. Now, though, not so much. At first, s/he was turning out new work at an alarming pace. Then s/he listened to some outside comments and decided to pull down and rework some of the stories s/he’d published. S/he … Read more

An Evening with Ray Bradbury

Hey Folks, I have a real treat for you today, via my friend, writer Christopher Ridge. Chris brought to my attention a presentation by Ray Bradbury to participants in a university writing program. You can find the link toward the end of this post. The video is almost an hour long, but it’s Ray Bradbury, for goodness’ sake. Who can’t listen to Ray Bradbury for an hour? On writing? Of course, I was hooked at the … Read more

Interim Post

Hi Folks, Well, I just posted a complete how-to book—in chapters and appendices—free on this site over the past several weeks. If you haven’t read it and you would like to, you can click Writing the Character-Driven Story to find the links to every chapter. I’ll be taking it down soon, so if you haven’t read it and you’d like to, please do so soon. If you would rather buy your own copy, you can find … Read more

Setting Goals — 2016 Is Almost Here

Hey Folks, If you’re a human being with dreams and aspirations, this is a great time to be thinking about what you want to attain or achieve in 2016. If you’re a writer, that means thinking about goals. At the minimum I recommend setting a daily writing goal, one that automatically resets at the beginning of each time period. If your goal is to write 1000 words per day and you meet or exceed it, great. … Read more

The Journal, Saturday, 8/22

The Day Ray Bradbury’s birthday. Ray Bradbury is the guy who knew at 12 years old what it took me 62 years to learn. Glad I didn’t wait until I was 63. Blessings, Mr. Bradbury. And thank you so much. Rolled out at 3 this morning. Checked email, got my coffee and had to go run off a bunch of coyotes. Ugh. No walk again today. Just writing again today. Listen, if you’re publishing your own … Read more

On Being Selfish

Hey Folks, This is another “extra” post, not part of the regular 10-day cycle. If I could assume the attitude of any other writer, it would be that of Ray Bradbury. There are a lot of quotations about him and from him, but the one biggie I always associate with him is, “I love to write. It’s all I do.” It’s very easy for me to allow myself to slip into living in the past. Had … Read more