While I didn't have a copy of Ray's Zen during my CW class last spring, I had a lot of his short stories, a lot of freetime, and a lot of apt time to think and create while basking in delightful admire-ee land.
..I still have a lot of that, actually, except now it's winter.

I wrote three things in a heavy Bradbury Inspired haze:
-One one act play inspired far too much by The Jar and the Lightning Rod salesman at the begining of Something Wicked. (After the Carnival Man shows, we meet the salesman. Shameless am I!)
-A short story (4,000 words when cut for contest submission) called Dog Killer (Everyone writes a dead dog story. I promise.)
And a lot of poems which I am avidly counting as my 'third' because I don't recall liking them much. But they were written, so ha!

Anyhow..
Have any of you guys splurged off into magical inspiration land during a class and written frighteningly (or wonderfully) Bradburian-Esque texts/thingywhotsits?
If you havent, have you wanted too?
Do certain places, lastly, remind you of Bradbury? Certain weather patterns, times?

(And because I'm a first time poster, hello! I hope you don't mind too much my rambling; I'm prone to bouts of coherantness, I promise.)

In ninth grade English class I wrote a sort of Dandelion Wine meets October Country story, shortly after having read both books.

Michelle, welcome to the board!

In my schooldays I used to occasionally "take influence" from the Bradbury story I had just finished reading, although I quickly discovered that I could much more easily and convincingly write like Arthur C. Clarke. Being British probably helped, but it's also because I don't have a naturally poetic turn of phrase like Bradbury does.

I think it was David Gerrold who referred to this imitative tendency of writers thus: "milk tastes like whatever is next to it in the fridge".

All my recent creative writing has been in screenplay form, and Bradbury is one of my reference points for this (he is a screenwriter as well as a prose writer). So too are Harlan Ellison and various British screenwriters.

I think that, eventually, when you have written enough, you begin to sound like you. (And don't forget, it took Bradbury many years of writing to find HIS distinctive voice.)