Written By Summer 2010 : Page 32
Peek under the myriad corrections and crossings-out and it’s plain that the prose comes to him crisply and coherently the first time around. The sentences sing conversationally, with the intuitive immediacy of good talk by candlelight—but afterward each word is sharpened, dialogue heightened, every stray phrasing made more energetic by shrewd cuts. event in his imagination, rockets and other planets the means to get there. “I’m a Zen-Buddhist,” Bradbury replies when I ask him about this. “These things and themes you ask me about come naturally. I don’t think about them; I do them. I don’t believe in thinking about things, I believe in doing. Everything is love. You do things for love, not money.” Is this his creative process, that he doesn’t even structure outlines? Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde Peek unde der the myriad corrections and crossings-out and it’s plain that the prose comes to him crisply and coherently the first time around. The senten under the myriad corrections and crossings-out and it’s plain that the prose comes to him crisply and coherently the first time around. The sentences sing conversationally, with the intuitive immediacy of good talk by candlelight—but afterward each word is sharpened, dialogue heightened, every stray phrasing made more energetic by shrewd cuts. event in his imagination, rockets and other planets the means to get there. “I’m a Zen-Buddhist,” Bradbury replies when I ask him about this. “These things and themes you ask me about come naturally. I don’t think about them; I do them. I don’t believe in thinking about things, I believe in doing. Everything is love. You do things for love, not money.” Is this his creative process, that he doesn’t even structure outlines? 2026, 2026, still being carefully maintained by home-computers and robot appliances long after its former occupants have been vaporized along with the rest of humanity in some un- recorded war. Food is prepared and disposed of, uneaten, and right before the house is accidentally destroyed at day’s end by a burning tree bough that crashes its roof, the computer (pro- grammed to pick a poem-a-day) recites Teasdale’s 12 lines in their entirety, thus not only acknowledging her as the story’s source, but crowning her as a ghostly mistress-of-ceremonies while what remains of us is cleared away. Much as he trusts his work to come forth in a gush, Brad- bury is a careful reviser. A sample manuscript page of his, published in the most recent Paris Review, reveals this. Peek under the myriad corrections and crossings-out and it’s plain that the prose comes to him crisply and coherently the first time around. The sentences sing conversationally, with the intuitive immediacy of good talk by candlelight—but af- terward each word is sharpened, dialogue heightened, every stray phrasing made more energetic by shrewd cuts. Write a short story a week has long been his advice to younger writers. It’s a policy he himself has maintained since he began writing at age 15 and carried on through his life and beyond his stroke at 82, in 2002. “That slowed me some- what,” he grins. Christopher Buckley, in his introduction to the Everyman edition, does the math and estimates that over- all Bradbury has written 3,640 stories. What we have is only a fraction of that output. One recent collection, The Cat’s Pajamas, is selected from early gushers that we’re told were too green the first time, but which Bradbury was able, after a lifetime of honing his craft, to fish from his archives, assess, and rewrite. the myriad corrections and crossings-out and it’s plain that the prose comes to him crisply and coherently the first time around. The sentences sing conversationally, with the k under the myriad corrections and crossings-out and it’s plain that the prose comes to him crisply and coherently the first time around. The sentences sing conversationally, with the intuitive immediacy of good talk by candlelight—but afterward each word is sharpened, dialogue heightened, every stray phrasing made more energetic by shrewd cuts. event in his imagination, rockets and other planets the means to get there. “I’m a Zen-Buddhist,” Bradbury replies when I ask him about this. “These things and themes you ask me about come naturally. I don’t think about them; I do them. I don’t believe in thinking about things, I believe in doing. Everything is love. You do things for love, not money.” Is this his creative process, that he doesn’t even structure outlines? 2026, still being carefully maintained by home-computers and robot appliances long after its former occupants have been vaporized along with the rest of humanity in some un- recorded war. Food is prepared and disposed of, uneaten, and right before the house is accidentally destroyed at day’s end by a burning tree bough that crashes its roof, the computer (pro- grammed to pick a poem-a-day) recites Teasdale’s 12 lines in their entirety, thus not only acknowledging her as the story’s source, but crowning her as a ghostly mistress-of-ceremonies while what remains of us is cleared away. Much as he trusts his work to come forth in a gush, Brad- bury is a careful reviser. A sample manuscript page of his, published in the most recent Paris Review, reveals this. Peek under the myriad corrections and crossings-out and it’s plain that the prose comes to him crisply and coherently the first time around. The sentences sing conversationally, with the intuitive immediacy of good talk by candlelight—but af- terward each word is sharpened, dialogue heightened, every stray phrasing made more energetic by shrewd cuts. Write a short story a week has long been his advice to younger writers. It’s a policy he himself has maintained since he began writing at age 15 and carried on through his life and beyond his stroke at 82, in 2002. “That slowed me some- what,” he grins. Christopher Buckley, in his introduction to the Everyman edition, does the math and estimates that over- all Bradbury has written 3,640 stories. What we have is only a fraction of that output. One recent collection, The Cat’s Pajamas, is selected from early gushers that we’re told were too green the first time, but which Bradbury was able, after a lifetime of honing his craft, to fish from his archives, assess, and rewrite. Ray Ray Bradbury, left, and director John Huston working on Moby Dick. candlelight—but afterward each word is sharpened, dialogue heightened, ev fRoM thE covER of Green ShadowS, whi te whale
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