Ray Bradbury’s “Zen in the Art of Writing” Nonfiction Book Test
1. “Each of the men I have listed seized a bit of the quicksilver of life, froze it for all time and turned, in the blaze of their creativity, to point at it and cry, “Isn’t this good!” And it was good.”
This quote establishes the upbeat, enthusiastic tone that Bradbury maintains throughout the entire text. In the beginning of the book where this quote is located, Bradbury emphasizes the joy that great artists, authors, and musicians experience from their work. Bradbury specifically cites El Greco, Tintoretto, and Thutmose in order to show that all great creators share a love for their creations. Following the quote, Bradbury states that people who write without “zest, gusto, or fun” are not complete writers.
Right out of the gate, Bradbury explains arguably the most important characteristic any writer can possess: love for one’s work. Instead of droning on about boring fundamentals, Bradbury leaps right into the fun stuff. Instead of espousing trite clichés about his craft, Bradbury embraces the passion and enjoyment that writing fosters. Bradbury immediately gains the reader’s interest by rejecting the conventional methods of discussing writing and instead focusing on why people love to write.
2. “But it is easy to doubt yourself, because you look around at a community of notions held by other writers, other intellectuals, and they make you blush with guilt. Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.”
This quote tempers the abundance of optimism Bradbury showed in the beginning of the text. Before the quote, Bradbury shares how the approval of renowned art scholar Bernard Berenson inspired him to cope with his...
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...n turned upside down. I no longer view writing as a laborious chore but as a unique tool for self-exploration. I can plunge deeply into the sunken recesses of my mind to dig up wonderfully entertaining stories and ideas. Instead of strictly adhering to a preconceived method, I can now allow my ideas to flow unto the page, constructing an infinite array of plots and characters. Most importantly, I can now love the act of writing. Instead of slogging through an endless stream of mind numbing assignments, I can now confront each school paper with every bit of my intellect while enjoying myself. I can also engage in writing for personal fulfillment as I now possess the enlightened view that writing does not have to be boring. I have always admired your character and your work, and I hope to the information in your great contribution to good use.
Sincerely,
Joshua Boyd
One of the biggest determinants for the success of a writer is engaging and maintaining the interest of a variety of readers. While there are endless approaches to telling a story, as well as many writing styles, the most effective writings are the ones that successfully impress a diverse audience. The essays Eating Chili Peppers and Conforming to Stand Out: A Look at American Beauty are two different styles of essays that unveil a similar search for self-gratification. While the essays cover different topics and the authors use different writing styles and approaches to engage the reader, they both unveil a similar underlying message of a search for self-gratification.
On December 10, 1950, in Stockholm, Sweden, one of the greatest literary minds of the twentieth century, William Faulkner, presented his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. If one reads in between the lines of this acceptance speech, they can detect a certain message – more of a cry or plead – aimed directly to adolescent authors and writers, and that message is to be the voice of your own generation; write about things with true importance. This also means that authors should include heart, soul, spirit, and raw, truthful emotion into their writing. “Love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” (Faulkner) should all be frequently embraced – it is the duty of authors to do so. If these young and adolescent authors ignore this message and duty, the already endangered state of literature will continue to diminish until its unfortunate extinction.
This assignment is a testament of growth and contributed to my outlook on strategies towards improving my writing through the importance of understanding how crucial, each component of the writing process is and how in depth you should take each process. Lastly, this reflection advocated how editing is the principal task of every good writer. “To write is human, to edit is divine,” Stephen
“I write because I love. I write for the survival of self, my children, my family, my community and for the Earth. I write to help keep our stories, our truths, our language alive”. (qtd. in Anthology 396.)
Through the characterization of Ricardo, the photographer, and the fellow townspeople, Ray Bradbury expresses his viewpoint on the controversy of invading western societies, and the impact it can have on indigenous people. Having experienced the encroachment from outsiders, Ricardo is faced with the persistent fight against the exploitation of innocent towns being turned into fashion sets. We, all members walking together on Earth, must realize the momentousness of unity cooperation regardless of wealth, or power, or race, or class.
As every well-read person knows, the background in which you grow up plays a huge role in how you write and your opinions. Fuller grew up with a very strict education, learning multiple classic languages before she was eight years old. Fern grew up with writers all throughout her family and had a traditional education and saw first hand the iniquities of what hard-working had to contend with. Through close analysis of their work, a reader can quickly find the connections between their tone, style, content, and purpose and their history of their lives and their educational upbringing.
Although the greater picture is that reading is fundamental, the two authors have a few different messages that they seek to communicate to their audiences. “The Joy of Reading and Writing” depicts how reading serves as a mechanism to escape the preconceived notions that constrain several groups of people from establishing themselves and achieving success in their lifetimes. “Reading to Write,” on the other hand, offers a valuable advice to aspiring writers. The author suggests that one has to read, read, and read before he or she can become a writer. Moreover, he holds an interesting opinion concerning mediocre writing. He says, “Every book you pick has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones” (p.221). Although these two essays differ in their contents and messages, the authors use the same rhetorical mode to write their essays. Both are process analyses, meaning that they develop their main argument and provide justification for it step by step. By employing this technique, the two authors create essays that are thoughtful, well supported, and easy to understand. In addition, Alexie and King both add a little personal touch to their writings as they include personal anecdotes. This has the effect of providing support for their arguments. Although the two essays have fairly different messages, the authors make use of anecdotes and structure their writing in a somewhat similar
In the past three months I feel like I have accomplished a great deal. As the semester comes to an end I find myself reflecting not only how I have survived the first semester but also what I have learned. The most important thing I have learned so far is how to become a better writer. I did not think it could really happen to me. I did not think I could handle all the work. I did not think I could actually become a better writer. Some how after all the hours of writing, and putting effort into the papers that I wrote this semester, I became a better writer. I did this because I concentrated on two very important areas, with the attitude of, if I could just become better in those then I would become a better writer. With help from an awesome teacher and a reliable tutor I have become a better writer by improving my skills in the areas of procrastination and content.
When a writer starts his work, most often than not, they think of ways they can catch their reader’s attention, but more importantly, how to awake emotions within them. They want to stand out from the rest and to do so, they must swim against the social trend that marks a specific society. That will make them significant; the way they write, how they make a reader feel, the specific way they write, and the devotion they have for their work. Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgard Allan Poe influenced significantly the American literary canon with their styles, themes, and forms, making them three important writers in America.
Many of Ray Bradbury’s works are satires on modern society from a traditional, humanistic viewpoint (Bernardo). Technology, as represented in his works, often displays human pride and foolishness (Wolfe). “In all of these stories, technology, backed up by philosophy and commercialism, tries to remove the inconveniences, difficulties, and challenges of being human and, in its effort to improve the human condition, impoverishes its spiritual condition” (Bernardo). Ray Bradbury’s use of technology is common in Fahrenheit 451, “The Veldt,” and The Martian Chronicles.
"The Illustrated Man: LITERARY ANALYSIS / NOTES by Ray Bradury." The Illustrated Man: LITERARY ANALYSIS / NOTES by Ray Bradbury. The Best Notes, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. .
As these few tales reveal, my memories of writing are strongly connected with the intense emotions I felt as I grew up. They are filled with joy, disappointment, boredom, and pride. I believe that each of these experiences has brought me to where I am today. I can only look to the future and hope that my growth will continue, and my writing will reflect those changes within me. As a writer, I have grown immeasurably and will continue to so long as I can find some paper and a pencil.
In William Faulkner’s “Speech Accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature,” he asserted, “It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past” (Faulkner). Humans, by nature, are capable of achieving the unimaginable. However, individuals often do not believe very strongly in this ability. While they possess the potential, many people do not have enough determination to reach toward their goals and “not merely endure: prevail” (Faulkner). As expressed by Faulkner, writers hold the duty to motivate their readers in an optimistic way. Although many individuals believe that the “writer’s duty” is primarily
I was always a creative child; it was something I just could not not be. Back then I didn’t know how to be ‘normal.’ While the other children wrote their essays about their mothers and pets or their best friends, I wrote about becoming birds or about ducks building robots. Truly. I suppose I could blame it on my parents – my father for trying to teach me how to read when I was too young and my mother for reading The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein to me as my bedtime story – but I know, truthfully, that it wasn’t their fault. It is no one’s fault, for I do not see my strange imagination as a terrible, abnormal thing. I do know that no one in particular influenced my creativity when I was younger, but I remember being obsessive about certain stories. I remember when I got my first computer – a 16-color piece of, well, garbage that barely ran. But even though it was so old and primitive, it opened new doors for my imagination, and I spent my childhood either playing games about knights and dragons or running around outside and acting out my own unscripted scenari...
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