Dogs Think Every Day is Christmas

While on my trip to the east coast, I flipped through the airline-supplied magazine and stumbled upon an interview with Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury! Admittedly, I haven’t read much of his work, and at 89 years old the man is an ICON!! Still! He has two books coming out this year and so far, one for 2011. The man just doesn’t stop writing!

I appreciated his interview because I have been struggling to stay motivated and really dig into this project. I haven’t been able to write past the first few pages because I’m worried I won’t like what I write. More importantly (although not really) I worry that other people won’t like what I write. So I’ve been letting myself get hung up on this fear of my work being hated! On the plus side, I’ve been coming up with lots of ideas and bits of the plot…although I’m not exactly sure how they’ll be arranged yet! Bradbury said, “Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love”. I hope I don’t misconstrue the meaning of his words here! Bradbury writes because he loves it. Seems easy enough! I imagine that, like all writers, he gets hung up on wanting other people to like his work, but that doesn’t stop him. He also said that some 20 years ago he was at a restaurant in Denver and heard a woman at the next table say, “Oh my god, I’ll bet dogs thing every day is Christmas!” And there was an idea for a book! It was THAT EASY! Well, sure, the ideas are the easy part!

Mr. Bradbury got me thinking, why stop writing? It’s silly! It’s impossible to write something that everybody likes. It’s important that we write something we’re proud of or we’ll never get anywhere, but we have to learn that it’s ok if other people don’t like it. So that’s what I’m going to do…keep on writing! As a matter of fact, as soon as I finish this post I’m going to type up my first pages (they’re handwritten right now). Maybe that’ll get the ball rolling and the words will start flowing.

The interviewer asked Bradbury what the key was to his prolific career and continuing to be so well-loved. He responded, “Don’t try to do, just do. If you live this life without trying, it’s good. If you try too hard, it won’t be any good. It just has to be done, period—like an explosion.”

(The article with Ray Bradbury was written by J. Rentilly. It was published in the May 1, 2010 issue of American Airlines “American Way”)