“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you…writing allows just the right recipes of truth, life, reality as you are able to eat, drink, and digest without hyperventilating and flopping like a dead fish in your bed.”
—Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
On reading this last night I considered how long it is taking me to get my novel together, The House, that is.
In actuality, the novel is written, and edited.
I’m presently working on the layout of the text. I’m a do-it-your-selfer.
After purchasing an edition of Adobe’s In Design CS4 I feel obligated to at least make an attempt at transferring my novel that I am self-publishing from MS Word to book format.
It’s been fun and educational, but also tedious and downright time consuming.
Whether I undertake to complete all the various steps in preparing a book for print, when I self-publish again, and those are my plans for my next book, I do not regret having given myself the time and experience of seeing what it takes to bring a novel into hard/soft over book format.
And yet the time spent doing this has taken me from my actual writing, not that of my novel, The House. It is complete.
But the revision of my next novel calls to me. And then there are the short, short stories I’ve been dying to write, or as Ray Bradbury says so eloquently, the writing on which I can become intoxicated.
Writing with a clearly defined purpose, that of composing a story or a novel, certainly has its merits and place.
Without planning and discipline to do this, very few, if any, books would come into existence. I am not speaking of the process of bringing the words into a bound and printed form, or that of digital, rather the process of crafting and refining a story or novel, one that engages, entertains and ideally educates us about ourselves, life and the reality of the world both around and within us.
Writing is writing. Putting words on paper. Or typing them on to a screen or sheet of paper. Getting them out of our brain. Letting go of our thoughts and imagination, so that they, and it can entangle us, thus setting free our hearts and minds.
This is what Ray Bradbury addresses in Zen in the Art of Writing, liberating our hearts and speaking to the wisdom and knowing of the ages and epochs through which our souls have passed time and time again. How we can best do that, the tricks we can play upon our minds that liberate our spirits and hearts.
So much do I long to do this after spending enormous amounts of time completing tedious tasks required to print and bind a book.
And yet perhaps this is life, the rounds of frustration we tread internally while attending the external responsibilities.
Seeing to this requirements, what we often say forms the banalities of our existences opens us to appreciate the joys of doing what we love, what brings us to life.
What dulls our senses can awaken us to life, if only we remain present and attentive, vibrant and open to our frustrations and hurts.
Awareness, the knife of discontent, the blade of consciousness.
Intoxication upon that which we love keeps us keen and sharp to that which can suck all life from us should we grow complacent.