Tag Archive for creativity

Three Videos of Ray Bradbury Talking About Writing

April 12, 2011 Blog

Ray Bradbury talks about his history as a writer trying to make it in publishing. He talks about how slowly from 1940 onward when Script Magazine accepted a story. In 1941 he sold one story to Science Magazine and it doubled every year pretty much after that and “it all paid off”. It concludes with the story behind the short story “The Lake” written 10 years later which has a personal metaphor that made that specific story important to him as a writer, and the direction of his career.

Here’s a short film for the National Endowment for the arts featuring Ray Bradbury as he discusses his life, literary loves and Fahrenheit 451. He talks about how experiences and what you read when you are 3 years old, or 6, or 10 and 12, imprint what you’ll write about when you’re in your 30s. “Things that you do should be things that you love, and things that you love should be things that you do,” this is a quote you’ll hear Bradbury repeat in many public talks. There was another quote in this video that stood out for me as a fascinating visual: “Stand at the top of the cliff and jump off and build your wings on the way down.”

Finally, in this video–after you get past the quirky intro by a librarian who was perhaps too used to talking infront of 5-year-olds–you’ll get Ray Bradbury telling a facsinating story about how he befriended a Carnival freak named Mr. Electrico at the age of 12 and how an interaction with him set his course for life as a writer. It set him off to write every day for the next 75 years and never look back!

It’s a fascinating story, not only for its content, but in the manner Ray Bradbury tells it! You can just TELL, this Bradbury thinks in plot development and narrative composition. Friggin’ brilliant.

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson

September 24, 2010 Blog

Here’s a video that accompanies Steven Johnson’s upcoming Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. It illustrates how ideas, for the most part, remain in a “hunched” state (under-developed or half-conceptualized) for years, and how only after possible interactions with other people’s ideas, or enough time incubating in one’s own mind, do they turn into complete ideas that can get translated into something in a more complete state.

It even shows how in today’s world of the internet and fast information, even though it distracts us much more from formulating finalized ideas, it also increases our absorption of other ideas that could inspire our own to develop further through accidental discoveries. This at least has made me feel more comfortable about my internet-intensive lifestyle. Phew!