The Timeless Wisdom of Ray Bradbury

What a great talk by Ray Bradbury!  I’ve posted it below.  He’s speech isn’t prepared, and he’s just telling the young writers what it takes to be a writer.  He’s so wonderfully sincere and entertaining.

Here’s some of his tips, what he calls "the hygiene of writing."

• Do not start by writing a novel ~ because you don’t know how to write yet.

• Write a story a week for a year, and this will teach you how to write.

• At the end of a year, if you write short stories, you’ll have at least one good short story.  If you write a novel, it won’t be any good.

• Every night for the next 1,000 days, read a short story, a poem, and an essay, but make it the greats, not this modern crap.

• Fire all those friends of yours who don’t believe in you.

• All you need is a pencil and a piece of paper.

• If you get blocked, it’s because you’re not writing the right thing.  Do something else.

• Don’t write to make money.  It doesn’t work that way.

• Don’t write to benefit the world.  Just set out to have a hell of a lot of fun.

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