Lessons from the master of ‘Zen in the Art of Writing’
December 31, 2006 | 12:00am
This Week’s Winner
Mariepraise VJ. Ungson describes herself as a reading and writing addict. She is a graduating student at St. Paul University QC, taking up Information Technology. She is also editor in chief, of her school paper. "I do hope I can get some books published. It has been a personal dream since I have been trying to write novels on the walls with my mom’s lipstick."
I was in first-year college when I got the greatest shock of my life. In a crowded classroom, I was seated at the farthest corner, holding in my hands a copy of Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury. I was doing what a prototypical student does: paying utmost inattention. As my writing professor was droning on about some textual principles, my mind was racing to far more important things. What was for lunch? Did I get question IIB in Programming correctly? Was Sirius Black never to resurface from that mysterious veil?
For what seemed like an eternity and a half, the hands of the clock stayed glued to their position as though making a mockery of my misery. Heaving a sigh, I then turned to the book that was in my hands and looked through half-closed eyes. What on earth is Zen and who would bother to read it? Buddhists, maybe. Or some tie-dyed tourist eager to get a taste of foreign culture. But certainly not a freshman student bored to death, slowly slipping off the edge of her seat.
Reluctantly, I opened the first page and read: "How to climb the tree of life; throw rocks at yourself, and get down again without breaking your bones or your spirit. A preface with a title not much longer than the book." Whoa. It was the advice that I earnestly took to heart, the preface that gave me my first whiff of addiction.
Many moons after I got that first bolt of lightning, Zen gave me lessons from the master himself. Being the self-proclaimed "special freak, the man with the child inside who remembers all," Ray Bradbury gave his first advice: to write with zest, to inscribe with vigor, and to report your hatreds and despairs with a kind of love. I remembered thinking then, when one is in college under the nose of her strict, meticulous and exacting professor who demands four book reports every week, how do you maintain writing with zest? I might as well have stood in the middle of an open field on a stormy night. With my pathetic questions and impertinent inquiries, a bolt of lightning was just what the doctor ordered.
Reading, or rather, galloping, through the pages of Zen gave me the needed shock to get that rush of blood to the head. After Bradbury recounted his tale of being the three-day-old baby who remembered in stunning detail his own circumcision, or how he rejoiced upon discovering that inside his skin was the gothic horror of a skeletal structure, I felt bliss, rage and panic, sometimes even insanity. His unconventional teachings became the scrolls of my subconscious mind. Suddenly, I began to write with fervor, running my pen and setting pages ablaze with fury and despair. Book reports were no longer chains of labor, but the antidote that Bradbury called the "poison of reality." He constantly reminded that I must stay drunk on writing so that reality cannot destroy me. There were lessons in writing swiftly and rapidly, for he had said that "in quickness is truth and that the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are." Since then, I have begun to employ Bradbury’s simple yet absurdly accurate philosophy taken from the common lizard: run fast, stand still.
Like any creature with the ability to flick like an eyelash, writers should also learn to write without casting an eye on the market, but rather, to jot down feelings instantly without minding others’ opinions. To him, "hesitation is thought and in delay comes the effort for style." We would be robbing readers and ourselves, if what we offer are mere strings of words and pathetic efforts to gain recognition. "If you are writing without zest, without gusto…you are only half a writer," he says.
I look now at the monstrous piles of papers rapidly accumulating on my desk and I continue to write some more. Even if I fill our entire house with scraps of thoughts and ideas, I can never get to completely explain how this book has shattered the chains to which I was bound. I can only share but a piece of what it has done for me, in the hope that some place, a bored freshman is likewise reading behind half-closed eyes.
Bradbury encourages you and everybody else to write every day, lest the poisons of reality accumulate and kill you faster. Indeed, writing is survival. Years ago, the brilliant writer of Zen in the Art of Writing said, "Not to write, for many of us, is to die."
Luckily, I paid attention and have stayed alive ever since.
Mariepraise VJ. Ungson describes herself as a reading and writing addict. She is a graduating student at St. Paul University QC, taking up Information Technology. She is also editor in chief, of her school paper. "I do hope I can get some books published. It has been a personal dream since I have been trying to write novels on the walls with my mom’s lipstick."
I was in first-year college when I got the greatest shock of my life. In a crowded classroom, I was seated at the farthest corner, holding in my hands a copy of Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury. I was doing what a prototypical student does: paying utmost inattention. As my writing professor was droning on about some textual principles, my mind was racing to far more important things. What was for lunch? Did I get question IIB in Programming correctly? Was Sirius Black never to resurface from that mysterious veil?
For what seemed like an eternity and a half, the hands of the clock stayed glued to their position as though making a mockery of my misery. Heaving a sigh, I then turned to the book that was in my hands and looked through half-closed eyes. What on earth is Zen and who would bother to read it? Buddhists, maybe. Or some tie-dyed tourist eager to get a taste of foreign culture. But certainly not a freshman student bored to death, slowly slipping off the edge of her seat.
Reluctantly, I opened the first page and read: "How to climb the tree of life; throw rocks at yourself, and get down again without breaking your bones or your spirit. A preface with a title not much longer than the book." Whoa. It was the advice that I earnestly took to heart, the preface that gave me my first whiff of addiction.
Many moons after I got that first bolt of lightning, Zen gave me lessons from the master himself. Being the self-proclaimed "special freak, the man with the child inside who remembers all," Ray Bradbury gave his first advice: to write with zest, to inscribe with vigor, and to report your hatreds and despairs with a kind of love. I remembered thinking then, when one is in college under the nose of her strict, meticulous and exacting professor who demands four book reports every week, how do you maintain writing with zest? I might as well have stood in the middle of an open field on a stormy night. With my pathetic questions and impertinent inquiries, a bolt of lightning was just what the doctor ordered.
Reading, or rather, galloping, through the pages of Zen gave me the needed shock to get that rush of blood to the head. After Bradbury recounted his tale of being the three-day-old baby who remembered in stunning detail his own circumcision, or how he rejoiced upon discovering that inside his skin was the gothic horror of a skeletal structure, I felt bliss, rage and panic, sometimes even insanity. His unconventional teachings became the scrolls of my subconscious mind. Suddenly, I began to write with fervor, running my pen and setting pages ablaze with fury and despair. Book reports were no longer chains of labor, but the antidote that Bradbury called the "poison of reality." He constantly reminded that I must stay drunk on writing so that reality cannot destroy me. There were lessons in writing swiftly and rapidly, for he had said that "in quickness is truth and that the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are." Since then, I have begun to employ Bradbury’s simple yet absurdly accurate philosophy taken from the common lizard: run fast, stand still.
Like any creature with the ability to flick like an eyelash, writers should also learn to write without casting an eye on the market, but rather, to jot down feelings instantly without minding others’ opinions. To him, "hesitation is thought and in delay comes the effort for style." We would be robbing readers and ourselves, if what we offer are mere strings of words and pathetic efforts to gain recognition. "If you are writing without zest, without gusto…you are only half a writer," he says.
I look now at the monstrous piles of papers rapidly accumulating on my desk and I continue to write some more. Even if I fill our entire house with scraps of thoughts and ideas, I can never get to completely explain how this book has shattered the chains to which I was bound. I can only share but a piece of what it has done for me, in the hope that some place, a bored freshman is likewise reading behind half-closed eyes.
Bradbury encourages you and everybody else to write every day, lest the poisons of reality accumulate and kill you faster. Indeed, writing is survival. Years ago, the brilliant writer of Zen in the Art of Writing said, "Not to write, for many of us, is to die."
Luckily, I paid attention and have stayed alive ever since.
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