I bestowed Ray Bradbury with the honorary title of being the grandfather of my literary aesthetic: cinematic absurdism.

I found an essay (an interview, really) in this book where he states

“All my stories are cinematic. … I may be the most cinematic novelist in the country today. All of my short stories can be shot right off the page. Each paragraph is a shot.”

Ray Bradbury

I knew there was a reason why I enjoyed his work so much!

That is how I approach my writing: every dialogue break, every inch of white space, is simply a subtle stage direction for the reader to move the camera in their mind’s eye. When it all came together in my head, it sent shivers down my spine.

Like me, he never rejected film and movies as a source of inspiration. To me, the physical product of film is cyclical. You can’t watch a great movie without a story; SOMEONE must write that story first.

Why me? Why NOT me?

Movies condense universal truths in a tiny amount of artistic space. Short story writers do the same.

I almost wish I had read this book sooner because I think the introduction to my thesis could have used this explanation to flesh out what I was trying to say.

I think he’s one of the few literary novelists who had minor success in Hollywood.

I know many other authors who have spent a lifetime in the industry and intensely hated the experience—or used it to inform their work; look at you, Bukowski.

To me, Bradbury frolicked in the cinematic environment in many ways. For example, he wrote the bloody screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick.

Come on. To be a writer is to be a control freak. We don’t and can’t—and shouldn’t—relinquish that aspect of our art freely.

But the thing about making a movie is that you can’t artistically control a film financially or literally once you’ve started down that path.

That product belongs to the cooks in the kitchen. And there’s a LOT. So you have a lot of people to answer to and for. I learned this quickly and stopped pursuing my interest in making films when I realized that.

Of course, my passion for filmmaking will always be a part of me, but it has been tamped down into a format that informs the writing voice I’m trying to develop. That works much better for me. I’m OK with writing for the screen when the stage is in the reader’s mind, and the words are on a page.

This is also what I believe Bradbury was trying to say throughout the collection. His advice made me giggle because I wanted to incorporate it into my work before I knew he had said it. Again, with the universal truths.

When you read books about how to do this thing called writing, they tend to say the same thing. It’s not new.

Write.
Write.
And write some more.
Revise.
Groan madly.
Throw it out.
Rewrite.
Something new.
Write.

See? Cyclical.