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“Writing has to be a passion and writing is all about
love." --Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury died last week at the age of 91. When a man lives
that long and is that famous, a lot of people get to meet him. I was one of
them. He came to speak for the Scriptwriter's Network in 2007. At the time I
was Director of Marketing and in change of doing the speaker write-ups for the
Scriptwriter's Network newsletter. I wrote up his talk that day and am
reprinting it here as my tribute to an amazing writer:
“Writing has to be a passion and writing is all about love,” Ray
Bradbury, the prolific, legendary author told the Scriptwriters Network
audience in the Glendale Public Library auditorium on February 10, 2007.
“I love movies! When I was three years old, I saw my first film The
Hunchback of Notre Dame, and I fell in love. Then I saw a dinosaur
movie, and I fell in love with dinosaurs. I loved movies so much that I saw as
many as nine a week, double features, good and bad.”
But back when Bradbury was growing up, there weren’t that many
places to go to see movies, which made Bradbury mad – so mad, in fact, that in
1961 he started a Film Society just so people could see lots of movies.
Within a short time nearly 2000 people joined this Film Society. “We
bought a theater and showed films there to educate writers. And I did
that 45 years ago because I was so goddamn mad that there just wasn’t a place
to see enough movies. I love movies!”
In Love with the Glendale Library
The Glendale Public Library is another of Bradbury’s loves. “I
didn’t go to college. I went to the library. The library is where I
grew up and why I came here today to speak. I love this library and I love this
city. The library taught me to write. I used to drown myself
in books here and when I had a newspaper route as a kid and got $10 together, I
bought even more books. When people asked me, ‘What are you doing?’ I said,
‘I’m becoming a writer.’ I love books, cartoons, comic books, movies,
plays, and I love the future. I fell in love with the future during the
Chicago World’s fair. It was the future!”
Bradbury began writing stories at age 12. “I wrote stories all
the time. I sold my first story for $15 to Weird Tales Magazine.
When I was 13 years old I read about the great library of Alexandria and how it
got burned, and the how Hitler burned books, and how Stalin burned books, and
that’s what I had in mind years later when I wrote Fahrenheit 451 – to
make sure books still existed. I literally wrote Fahrenheit 451 in
the library with dimes – 10 cents per half hour to rent a typewriter.”
Once Bradbury got published, it led to other things. “When one
of my $15 stories got rejected, I turned around and sold it to Mademoiselle
Magazine for $300.” Later, because of a tear sheet from Weird Tales,
Bradbury ended up being hired by writer/producer, Norman Corwin of CBS Radio.
Radio was another of Bradbury’s loves, “I fell in love with radio when I was
nineteen years old.”
Financial success, however, took a while: “When I married my
wife I had $10 in my pocket,” Bradbury said. “I gave $5 to the minister, but he
gave it back to me and said, ‘You’re going to need it.’” When Bradbury’s wife
got pregnant, Corwin advised him to go to New York and visit publishers. The
publishers kept asking him if he had written a novel, and Bradbury kept saying
no -- until one of them suggested that he weave all his stories together into
one book. And this is what he did, and the finished product became The
Martian Chronicles. “I’d written a book and I didn’t know it.” The
publisher gave him $700 – and then they asked him for another idea.” And
he was on his way.
Love and Moby Dick
“If you want to be a writer, you’ve got to be obsessed; you have
to have passion, and passion is a loving combination of many things,” Bradbury
said. Because he loved dinosaurs when he was six years old; and because
he wrote a dinosaur story; one day John Huston came into his life. “And I loved
John Huston. He had read one of my dinosaur stories and ended up getting
in touch with me. He asked me if I’d like to write the screenplay of Moby
Dick. I said, ‘Jesus Christ, I can’t even read that damn thing.
I’ve had it in the house for years.’ Huston told me to go home and read
as much of it as I could. So I went home and I told my wife, ‘I have to read a
book tonight and turn in a book report tomorrow.’ But, once again, love
saved me. I had always loved Shakespeare, and because of Shakespeare’s
influence on Moby Dick, I was able to read the book and I took the job
of writing the screenplay. I read and re-read that book until it was in
my blood and I became Herman Melville. I wrote the last 30 pages of the
script as Herman Melville!”
In Love with Ireland
Bradbury also loves travel, and his travels took him to Ireland
– and he fell in love with Ireland. “I ended up writing three plays about
Ireland – out of love.” He did staged readings of his plays while he was there,
and “I realized that my plays were good.” And it satisfied another of his loves
– acting.
Multiple Loves All Roll into One
Bradbury ended his talk with this: “Love is at the center
of everything. All my multiple loves from all the times in my life have
rolled over into what I’m doing now. To be a writer is to be a lover,” he said
looking out over the audience. “So you are all lovers, too.
_-cropped-.jpg)
Copyright (c) Sylvia Cary,
LMFT. Article originally published in the Scriptwriters Network newsletter in
2007.
Inspiration by Nancy Klann:
Inspiration by Nancy Klann:
“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.” Ray Bradbury
The ultimate reference book sits on my desk, within reach, as I work to better my writing each day. It weighs two and a half pounds, and it has 1,059 pages. A dictionary, you might guess. Thesaurus? An out-of-print Columbia Encyclopedia? No, no, and no.
It’s my go-to book for inspiration. It’s titled, The Stories of Ray Bradbury, and it contains one-hundred stories penned by the ultimate dream-catcher. I like to start my day with a cup coffee and a page of Bradbury ―just one of each―enough to charge my creative batteries. One day I can read about a giant sea creature who falls in love with a lighthouse, the next day a “wonderful white ice cream summer suit! White, white as the August moon!”
Yes, he inspires me. So much so, that when asked in a recent interview, “If you could ask your favorite author one question, who would it be and what would you ask?” My answer came fast, without any thought. “Ray Bradbury,” I said. “I would ask him to come back to us and grace us with more of his brilliance.”
The first time I had the pleasure of seeing the man whose prose read like poetry, was 1997, when he opened the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. He stood before us, bouncing with enthusiasm as he shared precious gems of encouragement with seasoned and novice writer’s alike―each one of us hungry to learn his secrets. I went back many more years, heard him speak again and again, and each time walked away touched by his brilliance, and his love of life.
“The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was twelve. In any event, here I am, eighty years old, feeling no different, full of a great sense of joy, and glad for the long life that has been allowed me. I have good plans for the next ten or twenty years, and I hope you’ll come along.” Written by Ray Bradbury on his 80th birthday.
Thinking about the ways this man has sparked my creativity, I began to wonder about the writers that have touched others in the same way. I’d love to know what authors inspire you.
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