stack of books and open notebook. Label: Quotation

Ray Bradbury on Writing

For this final day of NaNoWriMo, here are some words of wisdom from one of the most prolific and best known American authors.


headshot: smiling man with white hair, wearing glasses

“if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don’t even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is—excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasm. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches . . .”

— Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing (Joshua Odell Editions, 1996), p. 4.

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