{"id":357,"date":"2012-01-09T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2012-01-09T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=357"},"modified":"2012-01-09T06:00:40","modified_gmt":"2012-01-09T12:00:40","slug":"a-monk-of-the-order-of-bradbury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=357","title":{"rendered":"A Monk of the Order of Bradbury"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.\u201d \u2013 Ray Bradbury<\/em><\/p>\n

I am a collector of worthless books.\u00a0 For some unknown, deep-seated, pathological reason, I have the need to hoard large number of books.\u00a0 Most were purchased for a buck or two from used bookstores and will never have a financial value worthy of their shelf space.<\/p>\n

Yet, I love them.\u00a0 I read them.\u00a0 I gaze at the spectrum of colors and shapes they produce on my bookshelves.\u00a0 I shamefully smell their crisp, yellowing pages.\u00a0 But, I rarely re-read them.<\/p>\n

Certainly, I have books I enjoy, even books I love, but with the sort of memory I have, the idea of wasting time reading a book I have already read seems inefficient and clumsy.\u00a0 The exception has come with two or three particular books.\u00a0 I enjoy them immensely, but my favorite book of all-time is Zen in the Art of Writing<\/em> by Ray Bradbury.<\/p>\n

As a reader, I go through spurts of reading a particular writer.\u00a0 One of my Bradbury spurts happened along at the same time I was really learning to write fiction.\u00a0 I\u2019ve read countless tomes on grammar, mechanics, plot and structure.\u00a0 Most were individually forgettable, although I did get some nugget of information from each that will hopefully someday bear fruit.<\/p>\n

But Bradbury made me want to write.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t really tell me how to do it well.\u00a0 I doubt Ray Bradbury could explain to you why he writes the way he does.\u00a0 He is simply Bradbury.\u00a0 But he made me excited to get to a keyboard.\u00a0 He made me want to find my own landmine to step on, in hopes that when I got myself put back together I would find something great.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read Zen in the Art of Writing<\/em> several times now.\u00a0 Each time I walk away with that feeling, an itch in my fingers to start punching keys, a pressure in my brain that demands to be released into written word should acid run from my ears and steam blow from my eye sockets.<\/p>\n

Bradbury made me love writing.\u00a0 Not the finished product, the beautiful bundles of description and dialogue lying upon the page, but the process itself.\u00a0 I write not for \u201cConstant Reader\u201d as Stephen King would say, but for me.<\/p>\n

To love your writing is to love the parts of yourself that you find most sinister, embarrassing, and beautiful.\u00a0 To love writing is to love the flaws you would never dare to expose to the world\u2019s condemning eyes otherwise<\/p>\n

Ray Brabury\u2019s Zen in the Art of Writing<\/em> taught me to love writing, and in turn, myself.\u00a0 For that, no amount of thanks or appreciation could ever express my gratitude.\u00a0 Many books have entertained me, others have made me think, but this book changed my artistic life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.\u201d \u2013 Ray Bradbury I am a collector of worthless books.\u00a0 For some unknown, deep-seated, pathological reason, I have the need to hoard large number of books.\u00a0 Most were purchased for a buck or two from used bookstores and will never have a financial value […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[396,545,904,1296],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influence","tag-favorite-book","tag-influence","tag-ray-bradbury","tag-zen-in-the-art-of-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}