How to Write and Be More Creative: Nine Lessons From Ray Bradbury

Feb 03, 2022

Dear Friends,

In 2001, the American author and screenwriter, Ray Bradbury, delivered the keynote address at the Sixth Annual Writer's Symposium by the Sea hosted by Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. Each year, the symposium “inspires, encourages, and celebrates great writing.”

“I recognize the need of many of you to be writers,” Bradbury said. “And you don't want to do the wrong things. So for at least five minutes, I want to talk about the hygiene of writing — so you won't do anything wrong in the next year.”

Bradbury, then 80 years old, proceeded to speak for 50 minutes — without notes — sharing his reflections about writing and the creative process. His lecture, “Telling the Truth,” is the kind of talk that could only be delivered after a lifetime of accumulated wisdom and experience.

Nine times during the lecture, Bradbury returned to his theme: the best hygiene for writers. “Do these three things,” Bradbury advised midway through his remarks, “and you’ll be well on your way to being more creative.”

It’s always a joy to hear anyone impart lessons through anecdotes and personal stories. Bradbury’s talk is worth your time for the stories alone. But to show the structure of his talk — and to capture the nine lessons he shared — I distilled his remarks from 8,000 words to 1,200, bolding Bradbury’s main points: the bullets he was keeping in suspension in his head.

This distillation offers a reference for anyone aspiring to write and be more creative.

The problem with novels is you could spend a whole year writing, and it might not turn out well because you haven't learned to write yet.
The best hygiene for beginning writers or intermediate writers is to write a hell of a lot of short stories. If you could write one short story a week – it doesn't matter what the quality is to start – but at least you're practicing. And at the end of the year, you have 52 short stories and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. It can't be done. At the end of 30 weeks or 40 weeks or at the end of the year, all of a sudden a story will come that's just wonderful.
I started writing when I was 12, and I was 22 before I wrote my first decent short story. That's a hell of a lot of writing. Millions of words. I was doing everything wrong to start. I was imitating.
Write more short stories and then you'll be you'll be in training. You'll learn to compact things. You'll learn to look for ideas. Every week you'll be happy at the end of a week. You’ll have done something. But, in a novel, you don't know where the hell you're going.
I recognized the danger of spending a year on something that might not be very good. And your second novel might not be very good, or in your third one; meantime you can write 52 or 104 short stories and you're learning your craft. That's the important thing.
Take in more short stories because they all deal with metaphor. The sooner you recognize the ability of seeing a metaphor and knowing how to write the metaphor and to make collections of them, the better off you'll be. Then you'll be ready for the novel.
I was a collector of metaphors. I don't know how I can teach you to recognize a metaphor when you see it.
From this night forward, stuff your head with more different things from various fields.
I'll give you a simple program to follow every night for the next thousand nights:
Before you go to bed every night, do these three things:
Read one short story. That’ll take you ten minutes.
Then read one poem from the vast history of poetry. Read the great poets.
Then read one essay from various fields. They’re crammed with pomegranate ideas.
One short story, one poem, one essay a night for the next 1000 nights. When you're stuffing your head with one short story, one poem, and one essay every night before bed, at the end of a thousand nights, Jesus God you'll be full of stuff! You'll be full of ideas and metaphors along with your perceptions of life and your own personal experiences.
You want all these things to go in, and the more metaphors you can cram yourself with, they'll bounce around inside your head and make new metaphors. That's why you're doing this. But you've got to be able to recognize one when you see one.
Write a hell of a lot of short stories, then every night do these three things: one short story, one poem, and one essay, and you're well on your way to being more creative.
Get rid of those friends of yours who make fun of you and don't believe in you. Go home, make a phone call, and fire them. Anyone who doesn't believe in you and your future, to hell with them!
I've had my fill of that. I had people I thought were my friends but secretly they thought I was a nerd because I wanted to be a writer. People came by and said, “What are you doing here?” I said, “Becoming a writer.” They said, “You don't look like one.” I said, “Yeah, but I feel like one.”
I lived at the library. I never went to college. I couldn't afford to do that. But I went to the library three or four days a week for ten years. And I graduated from the library when I was 28.
Live in the library. Live in the library for Christ's sake! Live in a fever pitch. The great thing about the library is surprise, isn't it? To pull books off the shelf and not know what the hell they are. Suddenly, after you’ve pulled six books out and said, “No, that's not for me…no, not this one,” and finally you pick a fourth one out and you open it – and there you are: a mirror image of you. You're looking for someone like yourself.
What else can you cram into your eyeballs? Fall in love with old movies. I want your loves to be multiple! I don’t want you to be a snob about anything. Anything you love, you do it. It's got to be with a great sense of fun.
Writing is not a serious business. It's a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun at it. It’s not work. If it's work, stop and do something else.
What do you do about a sudden blockage in your writing? Well, it's obvious. You're doing the wrong thing. You're in the middle of writing something; you go blank, and your mind says, “No, that’s it, I’m done.” Okay, you're being warned. Your subconscious is saying, “I don't like you anymore. You're writing about things I don't give a damn for. You’re being political or your being socially aware. You're writing things that will benefit the world.”
To hell with that! I don't write things to benefit the world. If it happens that they do, swell. I didn't set out to do that. I set out to have a hell of a lot of fun. I've never worked a day in my life. The joy of writing has propelled me from day-to-day and year-to-year. I want you to envy me my joy. Get out of here tonight and say, “I’m being joyful!”
If you have writer's block, you can cure it this evening but stopping whatever you're writing and doing something else. You picked the wrong subject.
If you’ve gone into writing to make money, forget it. It doesn't work that way. Write what you want to read. By being true to your own fear, you begin to create stories.
Collect your fears. Make a list of ten things you love madly and write about them. Make a list of the people you hate and the things you hate and kill them by writing about them. Make a list of the things you fear. Write about your own personal nightmares. Write about the accumulations of things you're not sure happened to you, but intuitively you're right about them.
All my books have been surprises. I've never known where the hell I'm going. That’s the great fun. When I write my mysteries, I start out with some characters. I don't know where the hell I'm going, but they're fascinating. That's the reason we read mysteries.
We read mysteries two reasons: to meet peculiar people and to be educated. Most mysteries are about something – like antique collecting…or being a detective…or even being a writer. When you read a mystery, you get an education in characters and an education in a subject. We read because we're curious and we want to be educated to people and to things.
You don't know what's in you (in your writing and mind) until you test it. Until you word associate. You've been writing self-consciously and intellectually for too long. The deep stuff, your true self, hasn’t had a chance to come out. You've been so busy thinking commercially – what will sell? – instead of saying, “Who am I? How do I discover me?”
Sit down and just type any old thing that comes into your head. Just start word association. By God, about the bottom of the page, or the second page, suddenly some characters will take over. They begin to write. This will be your true self. Your true fear. Your true hope. Your true love. You'll be writing a passion. You’ll be writing with excitement. You’ll be finding out things about yourself that you didn’t even know you knew, and all the things in your past that you haven't touched yet. You haven't even begun to touch them.
That’s what I want for you! To surprise yourself. To not know what you're gonna do next.
The remarkable thing about life, quite often, is meeting people you feel you were destined to meet.
Have nowhere to go, except to life. Promise to grow old but never to grow up. Always love dinosaurs, madly, no matter what anyone says.
My first film was not a good film at all, but it was a beginning.
Maybe you don’t know it, but what you’re looking for in your writing and in your life is for one person to come up to you and say, “I love you for what you do.” Can you imagine?!
Writing isn’t about the money. It’s about someone paying attention and saying, “Hey! You’re okay. You're not nuts the way people say. We love you. We love you.”