Hello All,

Long time Ray reader and first time poster. I come here with a little bit of a quandry.

It's like this, you see, I find myself writing in a style that may be too overly influenced by Mr.Bradbury. Let me explain. This metaphorical possession is completely natural to me as I write, as if I'm truly writing 'down the bones' as one book put it more eloquently than I ever could. When I try to write 'straight' I have terrible trouble getting past the first paragraph. The writing feels listless, dead under my fingers, cynical even. When I'm swimming in the same pool as Mr.Bradbury, living the writing as I write I'm having a lot of fun.

I don't know if Mr.Bradbury's influence has been so great that I'm picking up good/bad habits by continuing to write in this way, or if I should conciously try and temper the more metaphorical side of my nature?

Here's a quick sample:

quote:

At eighty Aggy had no passion for the tending of cats or the blathering nostalgia of an old folk's home.
Madness, now that was something she could really sink her gums into.

As you can see it's not as good as Mr.Bradbury's writing, but I think you can see where I'm coming from.

So is the influence of Mr.Bradbury affecting me too much? Should I approach my writing in a different way?

Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

<confused in front of word processor>

Write what your fingers tell you, edit it later with the mind.

To paraphase Bradbury: "Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down."

Bradbury's been an influence on a lot of writers. So have George Orwell, Arthur C Clarke, H.G. Wells, and a bunch of others.

As long as you aren't actually rewriting Bradbury plots or characters, I don't see the harm in it...

This is an issue which worries writers at one time or another, but Bradbury has said even if you deliberately try to imitate someone, it will still come out sounding like you. I wouldn't worry about it.

I started writing as a teenager, and began by writing terrible imitations of Bradbury sci-fi and horror plots, and even worse imitations of his style!
However, as time passed, I departed from that and gradually found my own voice.
The only advice I can give you is to persist - you can only learn to write by writing. Also, you must read WIDELY.

Thanks for all the good advice.

Strangely enough I came to Bradbury quite a bit later than most. As a teenager I was seriously into John Steinbeck, Kafka and Stephen King. The first time I read Bradbury was, I think, in my early twenties; Dandelion Wine being the novel. And I hated it. It was so much of a depature in style from what I'd been reading that I couldn't get my head around it.

A few months later I picked up Something Wicked This Way Comes on a whim and upon reading it was like a lightbulb going off in my head. Here was someone who saw the world like me, I thought. I had never been so touched and moved by a person's writing before. It changed all my thoughts about fiction and how it should be. Using Bradbury's suggestions I began to read a lot more out of 'genre' - Eudora Welty, John Colier, Sherwood Anderson, Thomas Wolfe. In these writer's I saw a lot of where Bradbury came from, the seeds of his writing, his influences. I suppose in some ways I've been walking the path he took many years ago, moving through the writer's that shaped him.

I suppose my worry comes mainly after the first draft. I look down upon this world I've just had so much fun creating, and I wonder; is this too much like Bradbury? And then I go at it with the editor's fingers and I find myself cutting not for pace, plot or character, but for style. What I end up with, to me at least, is a lifeless lump of words. The equivalent of a blank white room with blank white people in a blank white world.

Bradbury's fiction to me is the fiction of people, of ideas and sensation, whereas most others create a fiction of incident and information. I've picked up so many books recently that begin with John Q Detective facing yet another serial killer, or yet another thriller where, despite pages upon pages of description, I never feel like I'm involved in the story, or any place particular. In a few words, Bradbury createsa whole worlds. In one metaphor Bradbury manages to create a summer and all the attendent magic of that season.

I suppose if I'm going to walk in anybody's shadow, then it's better that it's Bradbury and all those whoe influenced him.

I think I'll keep doing what I'm doing, and as Bradbury said 'build my wings on the way down'.

Thanks again.

<not as confused in front of the word processor>

Yay! Someone else reading Thomas Wolfe! Sure did wonders for me!

Just remember - You Can't Go home Again!

patrask, but I did go home again!

I recall Bradbury talking about going back to his boyhood home, taking off his shoes, rolling up his pants, and walking into the ravine (or was it the lake?) and in a twilight-zone moment straining to hear ... his mother calling him.

Yes, you can go home again!

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
patrask, but I did go home again!

I recall Bradbury talking about going back to his boyhood home, taking off his shoes, rolling up his pants, and walking into the ravine (or was it the lake?) and in a twilight-zone moment straining to hear ... his mother calling him.

Yes, you can go home again!

Was that Bang! You're Dead? Or are you referring to a talk that he gave?

Nico: No, I am referring to an event that happened to Bradbury in his life, back in the 1970's, I believe.

quote:

Originally posted by oz-crumley:
I started writing as a teenager, and began by writing terrible imitations of Bradbury sci-fi and horror plots...

Yesterday, RB said that he started out by writing sequels to E. R. Burroughs' Mars novels.

Don't worry about it - he turned out alright.