Hand in hand | A Short Rhyme | Neha's Notebook

hand in hand,

feet in sand,

stars shimmering in the sky,

water splashing on the land.

Who Am I if not Just A Story | Short Poem | Neha's Notebook

Who am I if not just a story?

Like the syllable of a wave,

spiralling itself infinite times,

until all it appears to be

is but a word in a book

yet, this word carries within it

story within a story

story within a story

story within a story.

11 Writing Lessons I learned From Ray Bradbury | Neha's Notebook | Lists for Writers

Ray Bradbury is the name of one of the most enthusiastic storytellers and fiction writers of 20th century. Most of his novels are written in the themes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

He was also known to share openly, his knowledge of the art with young writers. Many of his teachings can be read in the form of short essays in his book Zen in the Art of Writing.

While I was reading this book myself, I came across the word ‘Gusto’ for the very first time through the initial chapters of the book. Its not like that I was awestruck, at once, reading this simple word, howsoever, the way he writes about it, playing emphasis upon it, I could feel the enthusiasm that Mr. Bradbury is known to express in his novels.

Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating, by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer’s make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road he wants to go. I would only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto. — Ray Bradbury

There are plenty of lessons I have learned from reading his books and writings. In this piece, I’d stick to eleven of these, mostly, pertaining to the craft of writing. So, let’s get started!

#1 Word Associations

Word Associations, he said, helped him a great deal in writing short stories. “Just write any word that comes to your head, and soon you’ll start to see a pattern in these lists. The moment you see a pattern, you have a story…” he says.

It was with great relief, then, that in my early twenties I floundered into a word-association process in which I simply got out of bed each morning, walked to my desk, and put down any word or series of words that happened along in my head. I would then take arms against the word, or for it, and bring on an assortment of characters to weigh the word and show me its meaning in my own life. An hour or two hours later, to my amazement, a new story would be finished and done. The surprise was total and lovely. I soon found that I would have to work this way for the rest of my life.

— Ray Bradbury

#2 The Ray Bradbury Challenge

Popularly known as The Ray Bradbury Challenge, this is a writing process that he would use to write his stories. Many, many writers following his generation, including Neil Gaiman, mentioned that the creative process of Mr. Bradbury inspired them to write some really good stories.

The challenge consists of two parts:

Part 1: Read Daily for 1000 Nights

Mr. Bradbury tells young writers to read three things each night: poetry, one short story and an essay. This, he said, adds beautiful material to your writing pieces.

Part 2: Write Lots and Lots of Short Stories (Precisely 52/year)

“Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row”,

he says to newbie writers.

Mr. Bradbury said that there was a psychological reason to go into this training writing for short stories: At the end of every week, the writer will feel a sense of achievement, because, as he says, “you’ll have done something.”

#3 Write with Joy

Mr. Bradbury shares that he never worked a day in his life; the joy of writing propelled him from day to day, and from year to year.

“I don’t need an alarm clock. My story ideas wake me”, he would say.

I don’t believe in being serious about anything. I think life is too serious to be taken seriously. — Ray Bradbury

#4 Write Your Own Experiences

Mr. Bradbury mentions, when he was a boy, he met a young girl at the beach, who went into the water and never came back. Years later, when he was writing about this experience, tears followed through his eyes.

In order to get this essential emotional connect in our writing, it is always a great idea to write our own experiences.

#5 Add Movement to Stories

Breathe some movement into your stories. He says,

A story cannot be mechanical. It can only be dynamic. — Ray Bradbury

#6 Read Poetry every Day of your Life

Read poetry every day of your life, Mr. Bradbury tells writers.

Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. — Ray Bradbury

Poetry helps us pay attention to the details in our sensory experience. Emphasizing the importance of these sensory details, Mr. Bradbury writes,

Why all this insistence on the senses? Because in order to convince your reader that he is there, you must assault each of his senses, in turn, with color, sound, taste, and texture. If your reader feels the sun on his flesh, the wind fluttering his shirt sleeves, half your fight is won. The most improbable tales can be made believable, if your reader, through his senses, feels certain that he stands at the middle of events. — Ray Bradbury

#7 Have Wonder

Developing the innate childlike quality of wonder isn’t just a tool for writers, but a necessity. And why only writers, I feel that, it is a necessity for every human individual. Look what Mr. Bradbury had to say about this…

Fill your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. — Ray Bradbury

Locked into everything is a mystery. We then try to find, in any given age. You cannot grow up in a period and not be a child of your time. — Ray Bradbury

Another example through which he demonstrated the importance of having the quality of wonder, was in these verses. This is a verse from one of his unpublished but very famous poem ‘If Only We Had Taller Been’, that he recited in 1971 in a Mars mission of NASA.

Short man. Large dream.

I send my rockets forth,

between my ears,

Hoping an inch of Will is worth a pound of years.

- Ray Bradbury

#8 Develop a Good Sense of Metaphor

Read good stories, stories that have metaphor. — Ray Bradbury

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember. — Ray Bradbury

#9 Be Spontaneous

In quickness and spontaneity is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping. — Ray Bradbury

#10 Quantity Over Quality

You will have to write and put away or burn a lot of material before you are comfortable in this medium. You might as well start now and get the necessary work done. For I believe that eventually quantity will make for quality. How so? Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can quality come. All arts, big and small, are the elimination of waste motion in favor of the concise declaration. The artist learns what to leave out. His greatest art will often be what he does not say, what he leaves out, his ability to state simply with clear emotion, the way he wants to go. The artist must work so hard, so long, that a brain develops and lives, all of itself, in his fingers. — Ray Bradbury

I always say to students, give me four pages a day, every day. That’s three or four hundred thousand words a year. Most of that will be bilge, but the rest …? It will save your life! — Ray Bradbury

#11 Have Patience

Don’t worry about things. Don’t push. Just do your work and you’ll survive. The important thing is to have a ball, to be joyful, to be loving and to be explosive. Out of that comes everything and you grow. — Ray Bradbury

Ending with one of my favorite lines from Mr. Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine. It seems to me that this line describes so beautifully a fact of life. That, irrespective of whether I am able to see the beauty and vastness of life, it does exist. It’s already here. All we need to do is to shift the focus of our inner eyes…

Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers. — Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Beauty-beauty-beautiful.

8 Writing Lessons From J.D. Salinger | Neha's Notebook

 

“It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.” - JD Salinger

 

Just like the sun in this quotation written by him, JD Salinger too was a man of privacy. He would come out only when he felt like, which means not much if at all. Famous for his square-shooting lines and a solitary lifestyle, Mr. Salinger produced a slim yet rich body of work during his lifetime. Though, it is said that he might have dozens of novels unpublished, still locked away in some nook of his house. He is best remembered for his novel The Catcher in the Rye, based on the loss of childhood innocence of a boy named Holden Caufield and for a collection of short stories that featured his fictional character sets called The Glass Family.

JD Salinger’s Journey As a Writer (in brief)

JD Salinger began writing short stories during years of his secondary school. Thereafter, stumbling and tripping from drama to business to theatre, Salinger finally found his muse in language. Leaving his father’s meat-exporting business, he paved his way into writing. Even though, he encountered many roadblocks including the outbreak of World War II, unlike most soldiers who were impatient in the environment of hither-tither, Salinger fought, but he also wrote — and kept on writing constantly, from war’s start to war’s finish. He stopped publishing his work in 1965 but his son Matt Salinger now confirms that he never stopped writing till death.

 

With this, we’re all good to step ahead and get started…

 

#1 Write From Your Heart For Your Heart

Everybody writes.

 

Out of them, many are writers.

 

But what sets apart a great writer from the rest is personal involvement and naked spilling of one’s heart.

 

Mr. Salinger too agrees with this point through these lines:

 

If you’re a writer, you should stew in your own juices. - JD Salinger

 

I like to write. I live to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure. - JD Salinger

 

#2 Focus on the character

Mr. Salinger was known for diving deep into his characters and the relationships between characters. Mostly, his writing appealed to young readers; catching and mirroring the psyche of most teenagers; tethering and piercing into their deepest passions and horrors – in the clearest and honest most way possible.

 

His writing reflected a savvy insight spearheading straight into the emotional centre of his readers making them pause and say, “Oh yeah, I connect with it!”

 

Say, for instance, observe your reaction when you read this line:

 

Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody. - JD Salinger

 

#3 Read, Read, Read a lot

Most great writers appear to believe in reading as one of the best practices for writers. And so did Mr. Salinger. See what he had to say about this...

 

I’m quite illiterate but I read a lot. - J.D. Salinger

 

#4 Respect Your Individual Style

After a while in his career, Mr. Salinger released the control of literary rules and syntax. He wouldn’t write stories in conventional style. His fiction wasn’t plot-driven but, rather, it would be embroidered out of many bits & pieces of events, or moments taken in a span of time.

 

So, it is appropriate to say that as writers, we should explore our own style. And despite of our fears, we should respect the individuality of our writing voice.

 

An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s. - JD Salinger

 

You think of the book you’d most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it. - JD Salinger

 

How do you know you’re going to do something, until you do it? - JD Salinger

 

Most of the times, thinking what people think about you is a sure-fire way to suppress your writing voice…Mr. Salinger says,

 

One day a long time from now, you’ll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say about you. That’s when you’ll produce the work you are capable of.

 

#5 Write What You Feel. Feel What You Write.

Mr. Salinger’s writings depicted a controlled yet beautiful and flowy expression of emotional energy. His words are known to read with an ease of rhythm and stream of feelings just melting away, while piercing the dark rails of brain’s psyche. There is a subtle, invisible clarity of thought and emotion. Something, that doesn’t feel boring even if you read it again and again.

 

Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first one who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by the human behaviour. - JD Salinger

People never notice anything. - JD Salinger

I don’t exactly know what I mean by that but I mean it. - JD Salinger

If you’re lonely like most writers are, write your way out of it. - JD Salinger

 

#6 Discipline Discipline Discipline

Discipline is crucial to strengthening our writing muscles. Mr. Salinger too has shared in some of his interviews that he would start each morning at 6, never later than 7. Also, he believed in utilizing his night time for writing. While living with his two children in Manhattan, he would utilize the hours of the night to write while his children were asleep

 

Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.

- J. D. Salinger

 

#7 Structure is important too!

Along with the creative side of writing, things like organization, direction and structure are important too. Consider, for instance, the filing system of Salinger. He would keep a set of files, where a red dot meant ‘Under progress’ and a green dot meant ‘Needs editing’.

 

What structures, systems & tools do you use for your writing?

 

I think that one of these days…you’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you’ve got to start going there. - JD Salinger

#8 Enjoy your Life (Yes!)

Mr. Salinger accompanied a smorgasbord of interests. He was a fan of spiritual philosophies including Sufism, Zen Buddhism, Taoism and Vedanta. He was also a regular practitioner of meditation. Apart from that, he liked whopper burgers, Chinese food, roast beef and mashed potatoes. When organizing parties and get-togethers, he would drink cold drink and eat wafers and chips with his writer friends.

 

Mean to say, explore life in all its glory. Especially if you are a writer. Hurray!

 

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it. - JD Salinger

 

Ending with…

this famous quotation from Mr. Salinger’s novel,

 

What really knocks me out is a book that when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like. That doesn’t happen much, though. - JD Salinger

 

Upon finishing his novel, I felt just the same for Mr. Salinger. 

 

What all books of J. D. Salinger have you read, if any? Tell me or suggest me a title for my reading list in the comments below!

We are all Puppets | Poem | Neha's Notebook

 

We are all puppets

Of the great cosmic designer,

The one who fills the morning suns

With cups of yellow golden sunshine

And the one who chimes and shimmers

In the silver moon of the starry nights.

 

We are all puppets

Of the great cosmic kite-flyer

The one, at whose fingertips

Fly the kites of all colours and shapes.

 

We are all puppets

Of the great cosmic musician

At whose rhythms do we pulsate

Like strings of a guitar

Like keys of a piano.

 

We are all puppets

Of the great cosmic painter

Who paints in lush green

The crisp needles of leaves

And the blades of the grass thin

Who paints the curtains of butterflies

and the rings of rainbows…

 

We are all puppets

Of the great cosmic sculptor

At whose fingertips,

Does clay models itself

And the mud vases fill their moulds.

 

We are all puppets

Of the magnificent cosmic magician

At the spell of whose wand

Shimmers the wave tips,

At the verse of whom

The stars align themselves

Into a melodious harmony.

 

We are all puppets.

Of this handsome cosmic dancer

At whose moves, moves the universe

The galaxies swirl and coil,

The planets rotate, the fire boils.

 

We are all puppets

Colourful wrapped packages,

Encapsulating the charming enigma

The boxes of tricks and infinite mysteries

Within each one of us.

 

We are all puppets

We carry this mysterious puppet-master

Secretly within us.

Yes, within each one of us…