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Advice from Ray Bradbury

TheDarkKnight 🚫

First I should tell you what Bradbury means to me. When I was twelve, I was wandering through my school library looking for something new to read. I found a book called "The Illustrated Man", and that title hooked me. By the time I finished those stories, I was a fan for life.

Anyway, yesterday I found these bits of advice for writers:

Bradbury kept a sign above his typewriter that read "Don't think!"

He believed that creativity was an unconscious force, not an intellectual one. "You must never think at the typewriter-you must feel."

He believed that writer's block was a sign that your unconscious was telling you that you were headed in the wrong direction. "If you have writer's block you can cure it this evening by stopping what you are doing and writing something else."

One personal sidebar - it seems ironic that anywhere I go now, I seem to be surrounded by "illustrated" men and women. It looks like everybody is into body art now.

Replies:   Switch Blayde
Switch Blayde 🚫

@TheDarkKnight

He believed that creativity was an unconscious force, not an intellectual one. "You must never think at the typewriter-you must feel."

I wonder if he believed "writing is rewriting?"

Write it with your creative mind and then rewrite it with your intellectual one.

Replies:   awnlee jawking  Pixy I
awnlee jawking 🚫

@Switch Blayde

I wonder if he believed "writing is rewriting?"

I think that would require a second typewriter with the legend "Think".

AJ

Pixy I 🚫

@Switch Blayde

I wonder if he believed "writing is rewriting?"

Write it with your creative mind and then rewrite it with your intellectual one.

I've noticed over the years, that stories which I have just 'banged out' and posted, tend to do better than the ones that I have 'banged out' left for a day or two, and then gone back to re-write and try to make more 'readable' to all the people that don't have access to the mess that's my head.

Now I just get the thoughts out as fast as possible and then go back to add punctuation and some semblance of spelling ability, whilst trying not to overthink things. It seems to be working (for me).

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