This post could just as easily be called “Writing – the importance of sticking at it”. It is true that Ray Bradbury is a major writer in SF, but this wasn’t always the case as he modestly acknowledges in this video. In fact he points out that his early writing life was full of rejection slips, which sort of sounds familiar!
After watching this video two things really struck me:
- The importance of sticking at writing, even if you might suck. The point here being that you are, or should be, writing for your own personal pleasure.
- The fact that eventually he wrote a truly beautiful story from “inside”.
Since I started following the advice to write daily, regardless of circumstance, the whole task has indeed got a lot easier. I am not sure that the standard of my writing has improved much yet, but the volume of words produced means that you worry less over your “darlings”. As you worry less about acquiring some sort of mythical writing perfection I have found that writing becomes a lot more enjoyable and this in turn means you write more and so on.
If you don’t write, you aren’t a writer.
Of course none of this advice will be new to anyone that has read my earlier book review of Dorothea Brande’s book “On Becoming a Writer”.
Best wishes as ever.
Dave Felton.
