Zen in the Art of Writing

Zen in the Art of Writing – Ray Bradbury

Another book I’m not entirely sure how to review, so I’ll just give you an overview. This is a collection of essays from Ray Bradbury about writing. What inspires writing, what good writing feels like as you’re writing it, and what to do with the result (mostly re-write and re-write and re-write again). I was amazed as I was reading it. I’m a fan of Fahrenheit 451, but haven’t read much of his other works, and his writing is amazing. Not only is his writing amazing, but the voice and tone are so different between his essays and his stories that I never would have guessed he wrote both of them. In fact, halfway through the first essay, I went back and scrutinized the table of contents because I thought he had compiled the essays instead of writing every one of them himself. The essays in this book are equal parts entertaining, inspiring, and enjoyable. He has a playful tone and approaches his work from a position of love and fun, and it shows in his writing how much he enjoys doing it. Moreover, he achieves his goals. By writing about how to write well, he made me want to write well. I wasn’t even looking for inspiration to write, I just thought it would be a good read! It was all of that and more. I would recommend taking it an essay at a time so you have space to digest the ideas in each essay – not the best for reading between classes at school, but still great.